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Vo]. 10. No. 513. Feb. 14, 18S5. Annual Subscription, $3U.ii 



MEN, WOMEN, 

AND 

LOVERS 

BY 

EDITH SIMCOX 



Entered at the Post Office, N. Y., as second-class matter. 
Copyright, 1885, by John W.Lovell Co. 



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2 It) li,iroliU2 Parts, eac .... lo 

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273 Miiii of Athens 20 

279 (Jonqnest of Spam 10 

280 FitzDooJle Papers, etc.. 10 

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303 Life of Ma.homot. Part I. lo 

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310 Oliver aoldsmith, Irving 20 

311 Captain Bonneville 20 

312 Golden Girls 20 

313 English Humorists 1 ■) 

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315 Winifred Power '-'> 

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317 Pauaanias 15 

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322 Mark Seav/orth 2') 

323 Life of Paul Jones 20 

321 Round the World 'iO 

335 Elbow Room 20 

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328 How "it All Came Round. 20 

329 Dante Rosetti's Poems. . . 20 

330 The Canon's Ward 20 

331 Lucile, byO. Meredith.. 20 
333 Every Day Cook BDok. . . 20 

333 Lays of A 'cienb Rome.. 2.) 

334 Life of Burns 20 

3;55 The Young Foresters.... 20 

336 John Bull and His Island 20 

337 Salt Water, by Kingston. 29 

338 The Midhhipnian 20 

aj9 Proctors Po ms 20 

310 Clayton Rangers 20 

341 Schiller's Poems 30 

342 (Toethe's Faust 30 

343 Gof the"s Poems 20 

344 Life of Thackeray 10 

S45 Dante's Vision of Hell, 

Purgatory and I'aradise 20 

346 An Interesting Case 20 

347 Life of Byron, Nichol 10 

348 Life of Bunyan 10 

349 Valerie's Fate 10 

350 Grandfather Lickshintrle 20 
851 Lays of the Scottish Ca- 
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S52 Willis' Poems 20 

853 Tales of the French Re- 

volution 15 

3'4 LoouiaiKlLuirgcr., .... 20 
S.)5 More Leaves from a Lif 

in the Highlands V.i 

355 Hygiene of the Brain.. . . 25 
35T Berkeley the Manker 20 

358 Homes Abroad IJ 

359 Scoit's Lady of the Lake, 

with note-i 20 

360 Modern Christianity a 
Civilized Heathenism. . 15 



6\5Z Goldsmith's Plays; and 



361 Life of Sheliey 10 

I'S Pi 
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363 For Each and for All 15 

364 Life of Scott 10 

365 The Pathfinder 20 

366 The Sergeant's Lesracy.. 20 

367 An Old Man's Love 15 

368 Oil Lady Mary 10 

369 Life of Hume 10 

370 Twice-Told Tales 20 

371 The Story of Chinese 

Gordon. A. E. Hake. . . 20 

612 Hill and Valley 15 

373 Essays, by Emerson 20 

371 Essays, by George Eliot. . 20 

375 Science at Home 20 

376 Gnindfai^hcr's Chair 20 

377 Life of Defoe 10 

373 H omeward Bound 20 

370 The Charmed Sea 15 

3H0 Life of Locke 10 

381 A Fair Device 20 

3S3 Thadde sof Warsaw.... 20 

883 Life of Gibbon IC 

.^34 Dorothy Forster 20 

•.Wy Swiss Family Robinson.. 26 
386 Childhood of the World. . 10 

3S7 Princess Nanraxii e 25 

:!^3 Life in the Wilds 15 

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;■) I'he Land Question 10 

i.JL Homer's Odyssey 20 

?'ii Life of Milton 10 

893 Social Prob.ems 20 

3 J I T he Giant's Robe 20 

395 Sowers not Reapers 15 

396 Humor's Iliad 30 

397 Arabian Nights' Enter- 

tainments 25 

308 Lifeof Pope 10 

309 John Holds worth 20 

!00 Glen of the Echoes 15 

401 Li t'e of Johnson 10 

402 How he Reached the 

White House 25 

403 Poems, by E. A. Poe 20 

404 Lifeof Southey 10 

405 Life of J. G. Blaine 20 

406 Pole on Whist. . . .■ 15 

407 Lifeof Burke 10 

408 TheBnertield Tragedy.. 20 

409 Adrift with a Ventreance 25 

410 Life of Wxirdsworth 10 

4U Children of the Abbey. . . 30 
U3 Poems, by Swinburne.... 20 

413 Lifeof Chaucer 10 

414 Over the Summeni^ea... 20 

415 A Perilous Secret 20 

416 Lalla Rookh, by Moore.. 20 

417 Don QuLXOte 30 

418 " I Say No," by Collins. . 20 

419 Andersen's Fairy Tales. . 20 
430 A Broken Wedding- Ring 20 

421 Aurora Leigh 20 

4^3 Cavendish Card Essays. . 15 

133 Repented at Leisure 20 

434 Lifeof Cowper, Smith... 10 

425 Self-Help, by Smiles 25 

4'^') Narrative of A. Gordon 

Pym 15 



427 Life of Grover Cleveland 

428 Robinson Crusoe 

439 ■ ;Hlled Back, by (,;onway. 

430 Burns' I'uem> 

4.;i Lifeof Si)fiiM'r 

4:33 The Golo Bug. by Pop... 
4:33 Wrei:ks i>- the Sea of Life 

134 I'y phaines A bbey 

4;i5 .Miss Tommy, by Mulock. 

IS The Light of Asia 

437 Tales of Two Idle Ap- 

l)rentices 

433 The Assignation & Other 

Tale.s, by E A. Poe.... 

439 Noctes Anibrosianse 

410 History of the Mormons. 

441 Home as Found i 

442 Taine's English Litera- 

ture 

443 Bryant's Poems 

414 An Ishmaelite 

445 The Rival Doctors, by 

Lapointe ....' 

446 Tennyson's Poems ; 

447 The Murder in the Rue-": 

Morgue and Other Taiesf; 

448 Life of Fredrika Bremer/ 
4 19 Qulsi Sana .; 

450 Whittier's Poems ' 

451 Doris, by The Duchess. . 

452 M ystic l^ondon 

453 Black Poodle an I Other; 

Tales, by F. Anstey ! 

454 The Golden Dog ■; 

4.10 Pe.irls of the Fa th -. 

456 .ludith Shakespeare I 

457 Pi'jic's Poems 

458 Sunshine and Roses ,' 

459 John Bull and His Diiug .,' 

ter.-, by Max O Rell ' 

460 GaLiski. by Bayne .; 

46L Socialism ; 

463 Dark Dnys ' 

463 Deerslayer, by Cooper... 

464 Two years oefore the 

Mast, by R. H. Dana, Jr. 

465 Ean's Atonement 

466 Under the Will, by Hay.. 

4ij7 Prairie, by Cooper 

4!;8 -The Count of Talavera.. 
46 J Chase, by Lermina 

470 Vi<;, by A. Benrimo ' 

471 Pioneer, by Cooper 

472 Indian Sons of Songs.... 

473 Christmas S^torif s 

474 A Woman's Temntation.: 

475 Sheep m Wolf's Clothing. 
416 Love Works Wonders 

477 A Week in Killarney 

478 Tai-tarinof Tarascon...., 

479 Mrs. Browning's Poems J 

480 Ahce's Adventures I 

481 Through the Lookingj 

Glass, by Lewis Carroll 

482 Longfellow's Poems | 

48:3 The Child Hunters 

484 The T vvo Admirals , 

485 My Roses, by French ... 

486 History of the French 

Revolution. \ol. I.. , 

436 History of the KrencJ 

Revolution. VoLII... 

487 Moore's Poems 

488 Water Witch 

489 Bride of Lammermoor. . . 

490 Black Dwarf 

491 Red Rover 

493 Castle Dangerous 

493 Legend of Montrose 

494 Past and Present 

495 Surgeon's Daughter 

496 Woman's Trials 

497 Sesame and Lilies 

49b Drydeu's Poems 



MEN, WOMEN 



LOVERS 



EDITH SIMCOX 



FIRST AMERICAN 



^ FRO^LIHi^ LAST LONDON EDITION 



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NEW YORK 

JOHN W. LOVELL COMPANY 

14 ^ND 16 Vesey Street 



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CONTENTS. 



■^ PAGE 

In Memoriam . . . . *• • • . 9 

I. 

Consolations ....•••• 23 

II. 

A Diptych 51 

III. 
^' Some One had Blundered" . , , . 87 

IV. 
Midsummer Noon 1 11 

V. 
At Anchor ........ 129 

VI. 
Men our Brothers ...... 145 



lO IN MEMORIAM, 

Johnny promptly began a caricature of me in the 
act of dedication. Those were happy days ; and 
now that they are gone forever, the memory of this 
conversation emboldens me to preface the " fables 
and allegories " of the master's friends by a word or 
two of humble prose in memory of himself. 

We — I mean his guests — used sometimes to 
agree among ourselves that, charming as his clever- 
ness, readiness arid kindness must have made him 
anywhere, he could nowhere have been seen to such 
advantage as in his own island ; and I used to think 
that it was one chief proof of his wisdom to have 
chosen from the first a life so unlike other people's 
and so well suited to himself, because there was 
nothing about it that did not admit of being done 
perfectly — at all events, while he was there to do 
it. 

I believe he was nearly five-and-thirty when he 
came to the island. I know nothing about his life 
before that date ; and though old friends who did, 
used to come and stay with him, neither he nor they 
ever spoke, except incidentally, of those earlier 
days. The island is in British waters, but some 
hours' sail from the neighboring continent of Great 
Britain. The freehold or lordship, that goes by an 
archaic name (which I have forgotten), was in the 
market, and he bought it for a few thousand 
pounds. For years there had been no wealthy 
resident owner. The natives were farming fisher- 



^ IN MEMORIAM. II 

men or fishing farmers, with some surliness of 
mind and manners which we took to be a relic 
from old smuggling days, when a revenue cutter 
was the only strange craft ever seen among the sunk 
rocks and dangerous races which force even the 
islanders to keep a watchful eye on winds and tides. 

The estate was to be had cheap, all the more so 
because the last lord of the isle had met an ugly 
fate. He was engaged to be married, and had come 
to the island with a friend for a fortnight's shooting, 
while his betrothed was absorbed in the last anxious 
business of the trousseau. The island women say 
ishe was to have had a ball-dress trimmed with sea- 
birds' feathers that he had shot for her. Just when 
he was to have started home, a spell of furiously bad 
weather set in, and from day to day the boatmen 
refused to put to sea, saying no boat could live. 
The young man was in despair. He had written 
to announce his coming, and no letter or message 
could pass to explain his delay. 

At last one morning the wind sank for a little, 
and against the advice of the old men three sailors 
were bribed to get out their boat and try to take the 
two Englishmen to the mainland. The boat got out 
to sea, but in an hour's time the gale redoubled, the 
wind was right astern ; the boat was seen scudding 
along under a single jib, and in the open sea all 
might have gone well even yet ; but between the 
island and the coast there is half a mile of broken 



I? IN MEManiAM. 

water, part sand-bank, part sunken reef, with a few 
jagged rocks showing through the spray two or 
three rough lumps like dwarf martello towers, and 
one bare island white with sea-gulls. 

Except at high tide in smooth weather there are 
only two passages along the whole half-mile, and 
with the wind that blew, it would have been madness 
to try to coast round outside the dangerous reach. 
The only chance — those who watched the end all 
agreed that the lost boat was handled as well as boat 
could be in such a storm — the only chance was for 
the boat to run straight before the wind and shoot 
the middle channel in its course. Ten minutes 
later and this too might have been done : at flood 
tide a current runs through this channel with a 
strength of seven miles an hour. The sailors had 
calculated to a moment the time for reaching the 
passage when the current was slackest for the ebb, 
but the fury of the gale had put out their reckoning ; 
under bare poles they had been swept along faster 
than good sailing speed, and they were at the edge 
of the surf ten minutes too soon. 

An old, old man, father of one of the sailors who 
was lost, has told me the rest of the story as if he 
had been on board himself. Ten minutes sooner or 
later a man who knows his boat can face even this 
current if the weather is but ordinarily rough, but 
now there was a raging gale, and the wind was 
blowing against the tide. The old father said this 



IN MEMORIAM. 13 

as if it ended the story. A fiercer gust than ever 
bore the boat into the channel, bore back for a 
moment the force of the current, then there was a 
lull of wind, a rush of water, two men clung with 
all their force to the rudder, but the boat's head had 
swerved. As if the fiends of air and ocean had 
joined hands, the wind caught the wavering sail and 
drove the stout boat forward sideways, while the 
sullen current surging on the beam thrust her back- 
w^ards, helpless, athwart the channel. There was 
but a moment for those who understood what was 
happening to look their death in the face. Tossed 
by the wind, she shipped a heavy sea ; the water- 
logged hull was swept backwards, almost on her 
beam ends, by the current, to the mouth of the 
channel, and then by one fierce wave lifted up and 
dashed upon the rocks. 

For three years house and land stood ownerless 
and empty. It was like my friend that as soon as 
he heard this story he paid to the family of each of 
the three sailors drowned the full sum for which 
they had been tempted to put to sea. This is nearly 
thirty years ago, but traditions keep fresh in the 
island, and perhaps the memory of this wreck is all 
the greener because there has been no life lost at sea 
near the island since. One boat was wrecked in a 
fog upon a rock just outside the little harbor, but 
as the boat shivered, the two sailors on board heard 
the rattle of the chains that were fixed in the rock 



14 IN MEMORIAM. 

three winters before in view of just such a contin- 
gency, and clambered into safety by their help. At 
daybreak they were fetched ashore in the little life- 
boat, which, like the clanking clains, had been laughed 
at often enough by the sages of the beach as a lands- 
man's whim, and from that day onward no whim of 
the master, as they had learnt to call him, was ever 
laughed at, however little it might be understood. 
The cottagers' faith grew into a convenient supersti- 
tion, and because he often knew what would, and 
almost always what might happen, they came to 
him as an oracle, and followed his counsel without 
question, when, perhaps, if they had known his 
reasons, they would have ventured to prefer their 
own prejudices. 

It was in this way, rather as a trusted authority 
than as a teacher of new-fangled sciences, that he 
got new methods of cultivation adopted by the peo- 
ple, and was able to watch the productiveness of 
the island slowly doubling before his eyes. Old 
customs of joint harvesting and winter gatherings for 
work and gossip, which were on the point of dying 
out, were revived under his influence with a differ- 
ence which made them look like a forecast of the 
most enlightened modern notions about co-operative 
labor and sociability. He spent little money in the 
island ; that, he knew, was apt to go to fill the spirit 
keg in the boat's locker ; but he had inexhaustible 
devices for bringing about a friendly exchange of 



IN MEMORIA M. 1 5 

properties which left the other party richer, and yet 
well pleased at having obliged the master. 

It was he who launched the widows and grand- 
mothers — for the sea had left a considerable " surplus 
female population" — in a homely domestic woollen 
trade of spinning and knitting : the knitting did so 
well that it was scarcely worth while to weave. 
Before his day the lone women would starve and 
struggle upon the tiny patch of ground they were 
too poor and weak to till to profit. The neighbors 
were kind enough, and if the poor soul broke down, 
would dig and plant for her without reward ; but 
the fruit was little at best till the winter's knitting 
came to help. Then it seemed to arrange itself that 
each of these women should knit first for one of the 
largest farmers' families, and that in return her little 
plot should share with their own land at plough- 
time and harvest, and when the boats brought in 
their load of sea-weed for manure. We used to 
notice with pleasure that if there was any little bit 
of agricultural coquetry the men didn't half believe 
in for themselves, but thought the master liked, they 
always gave the widows' fields the benefit of it ; and 
what with this and the women's own work, weeding 
and hoeing through the summer, the prime crop of 
the season always came off one of these lots that 
used to be so forlorn. 

One of the first things that struck me in explormg 
the island was, that wherever one wanted to go, a 



l6 IN MEMORIAM. 

pretty natural path seemed to lead just there and 
nowhere else. There was only one real road, across 
the shoulder of the island, past the church and the 
mill and the castle, from the sheltered harbor with 
its stone breakwater, to the open beach where boats 
could anchor in summer. From this main road a 
dry shady lane or open grass alley led to each single 
homestead or cottage, and paths led on again from 
each dwelling to the owner's plot of field or com- 
mon ; but the divisions always led down to the cliff 
edge, so that in old times there was no such thing 
as a cliff path leading round the island. Here and 
there a plainly marked path tempted the explorer, 
and would lead more or less precipitously straight 
down to the water's edge, where stone was quarried 
for ballast or sea-weed landed for manure ; but the 
idle stroller, wishing to pass from one such ascent 
to the next, had to retrace his steps to the high land, 
or vault over half a dozen primitive boundary walls, 
compact with granite, gorse, ditch and thorn. The 
first winter after his arrival, the master set himself 
to buy privately, one by one, for some little favor 
or help in kind, the consent of each small proprie- 
tor to open a footway for the castle guests ; no path 
was made, but just where the hedge or natural 
obstacle had been, a rough stile or slab of stone 
opened or bridged the way ; and as the cottagers 
learnt to cross each other's plots and found the new 



TN MEMORIAM. if 

paths handy, a new kind of neighborliness grew up 
among them. 

When I knew him, the master's habits were as 
fixed as the seasons. In May he came to London 
for a month or so, and then was sometimes to be 
pei-suaded to pay a short visit to one or two old 
friends ; but before July he was in the island again, 
and through July, August and September, the castle 
was filled and refilled with contented guests. His 
invitations were to a dozen people for a month, and 
at first I think some tried to come and go as they 
pleased, but in time we got to look upon it as a kind 
of treason to the host and the company not to leave 
and arrive in the fashion planned for us. Indeed, 
sonpe of us liked the island so well we should 
scarcely have been prompt to leave it at a month's 
end but for the thought of another group waiting to 
enter on the reversion of our pleasures. 

By October the last set of visitors had come and 
gone, and the master was alone with his people and 
his books. His intercourse with the latter resulted 
in the production, at longish intervals, of mono- 
graphs that were the delight of the societies whose 
transactions they enriched. Few men have written 
so many of these short and hidden classics. He 
used to say that every subject he cared about was 
too large or too small to have a good book written 
about it ; and we felt that it would be out of char- 
acter for him to write anything but i/ie book on any 



l8 IJV MBMORIAM. 

subject. As it was, all that he wrote was perfect 
in form as well as notable in substance. He had the 
art of summing up in a few sentences all the pre- 
liminary knowledge required for understanding his 
argument, and then facts from all quarters were 
marshalled in what seemed a self-evident order to 
the support of a neat and novel proposition, so 
apparently self-evident that one wondered why it 
had never been clearly enunciated before. 

For six months he lived his own life thus and was 
much alone. Sometimes in the spring he was lost 
sight of for a while, and sometimes encountered in 
queer corners of the world, sometimes bent on what 
were thought quixotic schemes of benevolence, 
sometimes on what were unwisely wild and rash 
adventures. As he grew older the latter kind of 
escapades became less frequent, and he was less 
averse to owning the past follies he had committed. 
He said every one must let off their steam some- 
how ; for some people it is done involuntarily, — 
intense pain or pleasure swallow up all the surplus 
energies ; others again have no surplus, but the rest 
must either risk explosion or let off an unearthly 
shriek at times. 

Naturally many wondered why such a man had 
never married, and were slow to believe he never 
would. Only once in my hearing was he induced 
to give any approach to a serious answer to urgency 
on this point, and then it was by a quotation from 



IN MEMORIAM. 19 

Chamfort : " Quand je songe que, pour me marier, 
il faudrait que j'aimasse, il me parait, non pas im- 
possible, mais difficile que je me marie ; mais quand 
je songe qu'il faudrait que j'aimasse et que je fusse 
aim^, alors je crois qu'il est impossible que je me 
marie." One lady had the courage to protest she 
thought he need have no modest fear, and then 
affected to run over her friends in thought, and con- 
cluded that she could produce seven who, in a 
month's time, would love him, if he would let them, 
quite well enough ; whereto he said that people had 
different ideas about what was " enough." 

His quotation from Chamfort sent me to that 
author, where I found another sentence : " J'ai re- 
nonc^ a I'amitie de deux hommes ; I'un parcequ'il 
ne m'a jamais parle de lui ; I'autre parcequ'il ne 
m'a jamais parle de moi." The master, it must be 
confessed, spoke little of himself, and always, as it 
seemed to me, with a slight effort or reluctance, 
but still he did not entirely withhold that due of 
friendship, and hence no one suspected any mixture 
of motive in the visible readiness with which he 
turned to the other indispensable subject of his 
friend's 7noi. But he was entirely free from the 
vexatious arrogance which is just as fatal to friend- 
ship as either of Chamfort's omissions — the air of 
being interested in his friends' affairs for their sake 
and not for his own. However freely one acknowl- 
edged and felt his superiority, still it always seemed 



20 IN ME MORI AM. 

as if he really wanted and would have felt the ab- 
sence of that little something that each one had to 
contribute to his entourage ; and as marriage might 
have interfered with his enjoyment of, or at least 
his dependence upon, these miscellaneous contribu- 
tions, I for one was well content to let all stay as it 
was. 

Sometimes even in the summer months, and 
oftener as autumn came near, we had continuous 
days of rough weather with gales of wind and rain 
that made cliffing a mad risk and any outdoor sport 
impossible. It was then that the master shone most 
brilliantly as a host ; some provision was made for 
every one's amusement, and no one watched the sky 
dismally longing for a change of weather. But one 
entertainment had a certain veil of mystery about 
it. A select few, invited none of the rest quite 
knew upon what principle, used to disappear to- 
gether for one long morning with the master him- 
self into the most private room of the whole castle, 
a sort of boudoir leading out of his study on the 
farther side, and after this morning it was observed 
that first one and then another member of the mys- 
terious circle was wont to disappear for hours, and 
no jesting inquiries could ever prevail with the ini- 
tiated to reveal the secret of these absences. 

At last the hour of initiation dawned for me. It 
was seven years after I had seen him first, and then 
I understood that it was only friends of seven years' 



IN MEMORIAM. 21 

standing who were privileged to join the secret con- 
clave. I believe the whim dated from one storm^i 
October, not long after he had taken possession of 
the island ; other visitors had gone, and there were 
only four or five old friends left together. He pro- 
posed, half to pass the days, and half, he told me, 
wishing for a sotivenzr of old times, that they should 
each write in a big blank book of his some episode 
of real experience — the description of a scene, a 
moment, a feeling, a reflection, something that 
should be the more entirely their own because of 
the remoteness of such veiled confessions from the 
intercourse of ordinary life. Gradually it grew into 
a custom that old friends each year might read, and 
if they pleased, add to the growing collection of 
these fragmentary scenes. The writers of some 
have already gone over to the majority, and with the 
tacit permission of their "true author and begetter," 
our lost, best friend, these are now printed 

3In fHem0riam» 



ans^Ialtoits* 



Joys like winged dreams fly fast : 
Why should sadiicss longer last? 



• Fletcher. 



I HAVE heard of a man who took to drinking be- 
cause when he recovered from diphtheria he 
found his wife and two children had died of it. He 
was hardly to blame. An intense depression attends 
the first days of convalescence from this illness, and 
if there is at the same time any real cause of mental 
anxiety or distress, a state of mind is produced 
hardly distinguishable from melancholy madness, 
except by its cause and duration. I had been dis- 
abled, at an unfortunate time, by a bad attack of 
diphtheria, and the inevitable feeling of depression 
was aggravated by the fact that the scientific expe- 
dition to which I was attached had sailed without 
me, a friendly rival filling my vacant place, and a 
family upon whom I had been particularly anxious 
to call before starting on the expedition had left 
London during my illness, probably without hear- 
ing of it, so that they were free to imagine I had 
started for a two years' absence without even the 
bare formality of leave-taking. They were travel- 
ling abroad, I knew not where, and, besides, I had 
no colorable excuse for writing to explain a neglect 
they had not perhaps observed. 

25 



26 C OJVS OLA TIONS. 

Physical weakness and mental despondency re- 
acted on each other, and a more melancholy con- 
valescent seldom accepted the island hospitality. 
The day after arrival was cold and cloudy, I was 
exhausted with a long journey, and, glancing care- 
lessly at the ungenial sky, I thought the prescription 
of " change of scene " a shallow device of the doc- 
tors for sending their patients to suffer out of sight 
and earshot. The morning after was gray, too, but 
neither cold nor wet, and towards eleven o'clock, 
with the sense of discharging a laborious duty, I 
started for my first short walk. I remember walk- 
ing along a solitary lane, and noticing the ruts and 
grass along the footpath, and feeling dimly injured, 
as if it wasn't worth a long voyage to see only that. 
But, in fact, the eyes of my mind and body were 
closed from simple feebleness : I had no vivid con- 
sciousness of despair, only a passive sense of being 
" used up " too completely for either remedy or re- 
volt. 

I did not see that the clouds were breaking, and 
that a clear space of blue sky was showing on the 
horizon. I was tired with my few minutes' walk, 
and thought I would just struggle to the shore for a 
moment before struggling back to idle sulkiness 
upon the couch in-doors. A tolerably easy zigzag 
path led down to the beach. I noticed a spider's 
web on the bramble that caught my ulster, and once, 
when my foot slipped, in catching the rock to steady 



C ONS OLA TIONS. 2 7 

myself, I.nearly put my hand upon an ugly slimy slug. 
I carried an extra scarf for prudence, and even that 
grasshopper was a burden to my feeble limbs. I 
had fallen an unresisting victim to the peculiar peev- 
ishness which succeeds acute disease, and if any 
organism higher than the slug had come in my way 
it would have found me villanously cross. 

On reaching the bottom my temper was not im- 
proved by the first few steps over the raised beach 
of large rounded pebbles upon which, even in health, 
one may stagger a little uncomfortably ; as in the 
lane, I had been looking straight before me, with 
unobsei-vant eye and consciousness turned inwards, 
but it was a relief to reach a footing of fine firm 
shingle and sand, and with this encouragement I 
looked up. I was startled ; it seemed as if I had 
been asleep and woke with a start. 

I don't know what else was in sight, but this is 
what I saw. The inner arch of a sea-green wave 
was coming towards me, and the sun shone through 
the green. It was such a shock as if an angel had 
touched blind eyes and scales fell oft^, making reve- 
lation of lip-ht and color — ligrht and color the like 
of w^hich I had never felt the sight of before. There 
M'as a crest of sunlit foam upon the coming wave, 
but it was the soft, luminous emerald of the ap- 
proaching arch that thrilled me with something like 
the sweet wonder of first love, and I did not want 
to see anything but that. The wave broke, and I 



«o C OJVS OLA TIONS. 

stood still with childish impatience to see if the 
next wave would repeat the delightful line and hue. 
A moment of anxious suspense, and then a longer, 
Straight level line of wave lifted its head behind the 
surf, tossed its snowy curls, and swept majestically 
on one side the scrappy relics of its predecessor's 
end ; then, as it came nearer, all along the line 
there was this wondrous cui-ve of colored sunlight, 
softer than a clear emerald, fuller than the green of 
a sunset sky, more lasting than the opal's flash ; its 
beauty possessed me. I forgot everything but the 
present moment and the wave. Just where I was, 
in the middle of the beach, I sat down. Life had 
come back to me already, for all my soul was eager 
expectancy and hope. What would become of me 
if I never saw this magic arch of light again } I 
could wait for its return a minute, half a minute — 
surely it would come ! My pulse beat again with 
the hopes and fears of life. 

Time measured itself by waves, not moments. 
The tide does not go on rising evenly ; after a suc- 
cession of fine, perfectly formed, proudly crested 
waves, the sea takes breath, and tiny rollers follow 
upon each other's heels, not one of which has might 
to wave away into its own volume the foaming de- 
bris of the last. Sometimes a big wave had its in- 
rush spoilt by the back draught of a still mightier 
forerunner, and then all was seething foam, and I 
lost sight of my sea-green arch. Was it in such 



C OJVS OLA TIONS. =^9 

caves that the sea fairies play, and was it only now 
and then by favoring chance that mortal eyes could 
catch glimpses of the hidden archway through? 
Somehow, as the spot one gazes on grows large, 
when one sees nothing outside this spot, one's mind 
perhaps guesses that it must be as large as all the 
many things we are ^vont to see at once together. 
So this green arch seemed to swell mountainously, 
and I could have believed the call if some mer- 
maiden's hand had beckoned me near, as to the outer 
porch of the ocean palaces. But there was com- 
pensation, even when the foam veiled the opening 
gates of this unknown world ; for the big waves 
that were all foam played with the wind, and the 
sun played with the waves' plaything, and the spray 
rose in showers that glittered like dewdrops, and 
once a tiny foam-bow laughed at me, mocking me 
slyly — Will you not watch and wait for me? But 
I was too wise ; like a child who has found the 
right playfellow and a game to its mind, I was happy 
with the sea, and whoever had wished to read my 
thoughts must have watched a happy child with no 
room in its thoughts but for the grave prayer to a 
big playfellow, " Do it again, please." Again and 
again the waves rose and fell ; slowly and cautiously, 
like an army with scouts, the waves drew nearer, 
feeling their way, and again and again the wonder- 
ful arch of green came like music on my troubled 



30 C ONS OLA TIONS. 

mind — if indeed I had a mind, and not rather within 
the throbbing temples — 

That ocean where each kind 
Does straight its own resemblance find ; — 
Yet it creates transcending these 
Far other worlds and other seas, 
Annihilating all that's made 
To a green thought in a green shade. 

Time and trouble were no more, and when at last 
the waves were already washing the shingle at my 
very feet, and I rose reluctantly to leave the en- 
chanted spot, I found to my amaze that hours had 
passed. 

Crawling home was another affair, but as I sank 
on to the sofa to rest out the day, instead of the 
morning's sulkiness, it was with a half-smile I 
thought to myself, perhaps I am going to get well 
after all ! and I went to sleep at night with less 
than a resolution, a dumb perception that, of course, 
as soon as the sun was out to-morrow I would go 
back to the shore and look for my w^ave again. I 
have seen the sea break often since, and I Avatch 
with the double pleasure of association for the ten- 
der lights that shine too rarely through the trans- 
parent curving waters, but I have never seen again 
one wave quite like that first, and I have never felt 
again at the sight quite the same thrill of startled 
pleasure as on this morning when the glory of the 



C ONS OLA TIONS. 3 1 

waters called me back to hope and new sympathy 
with the world's Te Deu?n. 

The next day I had no thought but to renew the 
once tasted delight, but I slept well, and was ready 
to start a little earlier in the day. The sun was 
fully out, but an hour sooner in the day makes half 
a tide's difference to the beach, and I felt like one 
whose lover has broken tryst when on reaching the 
halting-place of yesterday the sea appeared a long 
stone's throw off, and there were no breaking waves. 
Still one must take one's friends as one finds them, 
and I could forgive something to my playfellow ; 
besides, the sands were smooth and dry, the sky was 
of the softest deep blue, cloudless, but without the 
cold intensity that follows rain, rather as if the 
thinnest veil of rosy mist hung over the dazzling 
vault ; the cliffs which I saw almost for the first time 
began with a grand precipice, and then a broken 
craggy promontory ran out to sea, and one steep 
wall of it was covered with a cloak of ivy. I looked 
round and took courage to seek my fortune at the 
water's edge. It was near low water, and shallow 
waves were breaking in foam less ripples upon a 
level shingly beach ; a few loose rocks lay together 
with wet sea-weed clinging to a kind of water-mark 
half way up their sides ; the sun had dried the 
upper surface, instinct was driving me to follow the 
land as far to sea as I could, and by making a cause- 
way of these rocks, I came to a point that let me 



32 C ONS OLA TIONS. 

look down upon the clear shallow sea, and hear be- 
hind me the swish of the ripple as it sank back over 
the shingle. 

Then I looked for my friend of yesterday. It 
wasn't quite canny. Had the mermaidens been at 
work, and was my world changed as I slept } There 
were no green breakers here, and yet I could not 
turn away in blank disenchantment, for another 
spell was cast on me ; here was magic and mystery 
and an enchantment more ineffably subtle than the 
last. It is the nature of the sea's waves to break, 
and I have dreamt of ' ' the light that never was on 
sea or land ; " but what is this light on sea and land 
at once, shedding colors by the side of which the 
rainbow is uniform and sober? The surface of the 
sea was mottled like a mackerel sky, but the dancing 
ripples had a thousand changing hues, all painted 
as it were upon a background of shining transparent 
gold, or rather upon gold of a luminous sheen that 
lent transparency to the bright colors laid on it. I 
watched the dazzling surface of the water, trying 
patiently and in vain to see what colors made the 
brightness. In the delirium of illness I had been 
haunted with queer fancies about space of four di- 
mensions ; I wondered was this the land where 
space had four dimensions, and had the colors of 
the spectrum changed to match ; for if so, it seemed 
that the fourth dimension was the color of sugar- 
candy, and every color of the rainbow in this uni- 



CONSOLATIONS. 33 

verse was mixed with gold-brown light, turning the 
blue and the green of the old world into new and 
indescribable shades. The sea was very still and 
clear, and the sun glittered on the shallow pebbly 
bottom, as well as the glancing surface, and one 
sheet of illuminated color shone through the other, 
and I knew not which was which. 

All I felt was the spell bidding me look and listen 
and drink in the sunshine. I stretched myself on 
tlie stones like a thankful mollusk, and as one 
spreads one's hands to the fire in winter, or a sup- 
pliant outstretches them to claim a boon, so my thin 
cold fingers spread themselves out to catch the 
showered warmth of the sun's radiance ; and mixing 
with the soothing warmth was the stiil music of the 
alternate splash and rustle of the rippling tide, a 
faint splash as the tiny wavelets broke, then a trick- 
ling sound like that of the stream's current when 
the boat forges ahead as the oars are at rest, and 
then a rustle like that of wind or showers on the 
forest leaves as the retiring water bade the sand 
and shingles kiss, as it ran away from them like a 
child at play, crouching in mock concealment, ere 
it springs upon its playfellow with another sweet 
caress. I felt very near the world of strange sea- 
beasts ; the sun touched some archaic fibres in my 
frame, and I seemed to understand how wise mol- 
lusks that lay still and looked at it, grew lovely with 
green and orange, lilac, rose and crimson. A mo- 



34 C ON SOLA TIONS. 

ment more and I might have drunk in more wisdom 
than the sea spirits hold good to grant to mortal 
men, but the magic spells were a lullaby and I lost 
myself awhile, the bright sea vanished, and I only 
heard, as if far off in dreams, now and again the 
trickling wavelets and felt the gracious warmth 
pouring into my outstretched hands. 

After a time some obtrusive vertebrae reminded 
me we had degenerated from the possibilities of 
molluscous ease. The tide had ebbed and turned, 
and it was still just possible to leave my rocks dry 
shod and regain the beach, but I was less simply 
happy than yesterday. Life was becoming strenu- 
ous. If every day was 'iO be crowded like this with 
new emotions — my doctor had forbidden excite- 
ment — I wasn't at all sure that I was well enough 
to stand the strain. They talk about sending one 
to the sea to rest, but it is much easier to dissect a 
jellyfish than to retrace the course of evolution in 
one's own person and grow back into one again ; 
and yet experience seemed to show that sane hu- 
manity could not bask in the seaside sunshine with- 
out feeling irresistibly tempted to cherish that im- 
possible ambition. It would be a help towards 
understanding the philosophy of dreams if we more 
often watched the wandering course of sleepy 
thoughts that we suffer to choose their own way at 
the random guidance of association ; I felt vaguely 
as if there was a mystery to solve, as if there must 



CONSOLATIONS. 35 

be a reason, could I but remember or find out, why 
on this solitary coast all at once " es -ward mir 
heimisch zu Muth," and even as I wondered what 
the problem was, my thoughts strayed sleepily into 
wild and incoherent strains, in which it seemed as 
if I was the passive inanimate portion of the natural 
world while the sea and sky moved and spoke and 
ruled around me. But I was tired now even of this 
idle kind of thought, and concluded reasonably to 
go home and to sleep over a stupid book. 

I was not sorry the next day to be spared a fresh 
encounter with the strange spirits of the island. 
My host took me out in his boat ; we talked to the 
sailors, of a son at sea, of the lobster fishery and the 
vraic harvest, and things seemed real and natural. 
I felt just a little afraid of fresh bewildering en- 
counters, and I half planned for the next day to 
stroll upon a higher level and not to go and w^atch 
the sea break. So thought, so done. The shady 
lane, with its pretty hedgerows, in which the pink 
leaf-shoots of the young honeysuckle mixed with 
the flowering May, led past a group of dwarf mas- 
sive cottages with farm fittings of a Cyclopsean order 
— the gate-post hung for a hinge in a perforated slab, 
and the pigsties had granite troughs — to a footpath 
opening on the downs. A pleasant light caught the 
cottage roof, where a patch of golden moss grew 
upon the thatch of the gable, and where a fluted 
row of tiles formed an eave beyond the thatch to 



36 CONSOLATIONS. 

carry off the autumn rains. A wide-mouthed, clean- 
faced girl was nursing a baby in the dooi"way, and 
smiled benignantly as I passed. Walking was 
easier than three days before, and I had resolved 
not to think of anxious subjects till I was strong 
enough to decide on them with better effect. 

A fresh wind blew from the sea ; the path led at 
a varying level along the down broken every here 
and there with projecting crags, boulders fallen from 
a crag above, and sudden walls of rock, where the 
sea has carved a narrow inlet. It was a pleasant 
path, but I had seen such views before in Devon, 
Yorkshire, or maybe elsewhere ; nothing was strange 
save the aromatic whiffs of some thymy perfume 
that seemed to come from '^ 

The underflowers, which did enrich the ground, 
With sweeter scents than in Arabia found. 

But somehow the path tempted me to a distance 
beyond my strength. I was tired of wide views 
that seemed just like what one had seen and known 
all one's life ; they seemed to remind me tiresomely 
of what I was trying to forget, that life itself was 
like to be hard and tiresome when I got back to it 
anon. I wanted to escape from this remembrance, 
and in another moment I should have been caught 
regretting the weird spirits of the shore. A stronger 
gust of wind, that it was a labor to battle with, put 
the crowning touch to my discontent. Just in front 
the down sank a little, a steep, green, semicircular 



C ONS OLA TIONS. 3 7 

arena faced the sea, and I struggled on to reach its 
shelter. Only a step or two beyond the ridge and 
the air was warm and still, like a June evening. I 
threw myself on the slope and felt the rapture of 
repose. I was under the lea of a flaming gorse bush, 
and the sweet shadowy fragrance stole upon the 
senses unawares ; something ineffably sweet and 
subtle seemed to pen'ade the moveless air, the sub- 
tle sweetness was strange and new — were there 
spirits of the earth here as well as of the sea } 

I forgot the weariness, and half raised myself to 
see whence this new wonder came. The clump 
that sheltered me was ablaze with the deepest 
orange-yellow bloom ; each flowering spiky head 
was an abyss of warm, deep, odorous color; furze 
like this, indeed, I had never seen before, every 
blossom large and open wide, and countless full 
open blossoms, jostling each other upon every stem, 
and the flowering stems jostling each other on the 
burning bush. I drew a big branch towards me, 
and drank like nectar a great draught of the pure, 
sweet scent. But the sweet gorse is a treasure, not 
a mystery, and the first breath I drew on this spot 
was laden with a mystery of sweetness. I lay back 
upon the grass again w^ith closed eyes, inviting the 
ethereal messenger, and my heart sank as for half a 
moment I waited in vain for the perplexing fra- 
grance. I moved impatiently, and threw my arm 
back to make a pillow ; at the very moment some- 



38 C ONS OLA TIONS. 

thing like fairy fingers seemed to pull my hair, and 
in a breath the scent was there again, and the sim- 
ple magic of its being read. Mingled with the 
gorse, half choked by the robuster clumps, but 
thrusting its tender green leaves triumphantly 
through the cushions of the younger plants, a very 
thicket of sweetbrier w^as growing all round, and 
the shoots I had crushed unknowingly were sending 
out their sweetest fragrance to mix with the simple 
nectar of the whin-bloom in a cunning draught of 
unearthly delicacy. Those may laugh at me who 
will, and count it strange to be thus moved by the 
breath of a passing scent, but my heart grew warm 
with love for those children of the warm, lone 
earth ; they had shed their fragrance year by year, 
and until now none had loved them for it. They 
vs^ere generous to me, indeed, with the one-sided 
generosity of power ; it was I, not they, that were 
the richer for my loving them, for thinking with a 
tender joy that Love himself had learnt his sweet- 
ness from the flower's kisses, wherewith the great 
iiother fed his youth, and the refrain to the pretty 
fancy came to me like an omen : — 

Cras amet qui nunquam amavit, quique amavit eras amet. 

The sunlit waves came to me with a startling 
and happy message that the outer world was fair, 
whether I saw it or no ; but the sweetbrier among 
the prickles challenged me to own a spiritual truth 



CONSOLATIONS. 39 

— the world was lovable, whether I saw why or no, 
and whether its sweetness was beloved — as by me 
to-day — or left unseen, undreamt of, through the 
lonely years. My brain was tired and the thoughts 
wandered wildly ; snatches of old hymns mixed with 
the '" Pei*\4gilium Veneris," and my last thought 
was a dreamy wonder, whether the love of God 
was something like my love of earth just now. A 
wave of love sweeps over us just when we feel the 
one thing needed given, and the love that seeks its 
object will own none but the imagined giver, and to 
the imagined object of our love we give a name — 
our God, kind Earth, or Mother Nature — and such 
naming is in itself a prayer, a blessing and a thanks- 
giving far the good God's gift. Thoughts like these 
rose questioningly ; and pleased with asking, ere the 
question pressed for answer, I was asleep con dio. 

Noon was past, and the south sun had travelled 
two hand-breadths towards the right before I woke, 
rested, hopeful, and refreshed. The sound that 
woke me was the tinkle of a sheep-bell, following 
an old crone, who was tethering the family cow to 
graze on the common just above. I called to her, 
and though our friendly speech was mutually unin- 
telligible, like two children of nature we arranged 
friendly terms of barter, and she brought me a cup 
of creamy milk and a stale crust of home-baked 
bread. I rose invigorated, and before leaving my 
warm lair bent for one more draught of the mixed 



40 C ONS OLA TIONS. 

sweet scent. Alas ! the island is enchanted ! the 
gorse was sweet, and so was the brier, with their 
several known and pleasant sweetness, but the 
unearthly fragrance of those two moments came 
back to me no more. It may be that, as slight 
sounds are distressing to a feeble brain that would 
pass unnoticed else, so a more than normal keen- 
ness of the other senses goes with moments of 
excited feebleness. Basking in the sunshine I had 
felt a dim intuition of ancient kinship with the 
many-colored zoophytes of the shallow seas. Here 
on the thymy heights what more natural than to 
remember some hints of fellowship with the insect 
hosts, whose very hum seems to catch some inter- 
mediate sense, and is more felt than heard? Still I 
was undismayed ; whether the momentary sensation 
was to be renewed hereafter, or to remain forever 
alone in memory, I could doubt my life or love 
more easily than the certain fact that, once and 
again, I had been drunk w4th ineffable odors in 
this sunny island combe. 

I was strong now for a new departure, but the 
wind was still high upon the downs, and my 
thoughts reverted to a wide path leading to the 
shore, the upper end of which lay not far back. I 
had wondered as I passed to what the path could 
lead, for there was neither beach nor anchorage 
below. The path was plain and easy, and landed 
me upon a slightly sloping surface of solid rock ; 



C ONS OLA TIONS. 41 

massive iron rings were fixed in it here and there, 
and rusty iron bars between them were twisted like 
wire into uncouth shapes by the fury of the waves. 
At one side the edge of the rocky slab sank sheer 
into the water, and there was a deep, narrow pas- 
sage where a boat might run alongside to land its 
cargo ; clearly it was here that the sailors used to 
land their boat-loads of sea-weed, to be carried up 
the path to spread upon the fields of the nearest 
farmstead as manure. The landing-place was one 
that could only be used in the fairest weather, and 
the station was deserted now ; the coast was rough 
and broken, rocky pinnacles, tiny islets, and sharp 
sunken rocks in masses, large and small, strewed 
the coast, and the fresh wind was dashing great 
waves against them all with deafening roar. 

And when the sea was breaking, I could do no 
other than draw near to watch it break. The old 
spell drew me on to the farthest accessible point of 
rocky projection ; by clambering beyond the broad 
level slab, along a kind of promontory, covered at 
high water by the sea, but now dry save for a few 
pools in the spray-worn hollows, and bare of all 
maritime life because of the violence of the waves, 
one reached a secure low pinnacle, round which the 
waves were breaking in all their glory. The noise 
was deafening, the sea a clear sea-green, the sky 
and sunlight bright and clear. Chance fixed my 
eye at once upon a certain rock over which each 



42 C ONS OLA TIONS. 

wave broke, burying the summit beneath a flood of 
foam ; then as the wave retreated and the rock rose 
from its immersion, still waterfalls fell as if from 
some secret reservoir, from ledge to ledge of the 
rock, into the still seething, surging surf below, and 
ere one could discover whence these little cataracts 
proceeded, another wave submerged the whole bed 
of rocks, and again retired, leaving unaccountable 
waterworks to play for a moment and vanish again. 
It was a giddy sight, like watching the revolutions 
of a waterwheel, and that, too, in doubt as to what 
the designers of the machinery had meant to com- 
pass by its motions. A great wave broke, and a 
shower of spray rose up against the sky, where the 
fickle wind caught it and sent a cool handful lightly 
in my face. I was dazzled for a moment, and as I 
recovered sight my eyes were bent a yard or two 
farther out to sea, upon the right. 

Here, when the wave had burst, the sea was level 
with thick, white smooth foam, but as the waters 
rushed back, sucked down as if b}^ a great passion 
of remorse, then, instead of black rocks showing 
sharp teeth above the surf, the waves, as they sank 
back, disclosed a deepening, M^idening, wdiirling 
abyss, with walls of whirling foam, a funnel-shaped 
vortex, boring down as it revolved into deeper and 
deeper recesses of the sea, with foaming sides, seem- 
ing to recede from the intent gaze. The snowy 
whiteness of the whirling billows, the seeming soft- 



CONSOLATIONS. 43 

ness of a sea all foam, have a strange fascination for 
the giddy senses ; there are clouds on which one 
would choose to rest if they were in reach, and no 
cloud could promise a softer, cooler, sweeter rest- 
ing-place than the very heart of this foaming whirl- 
pool. Wave upon wave spent itself, and I could 
not cease from watching the returning, ever-varying 
face of the whirling hollow, down which creamy 
cataracts poured over the shifting watery walls. 
The sun shone upon the foam, it glittered like snow, 
and one might have said there was no purer white- 
ness in the world than this, when all at once there 
floated across the foam another brightness, of white, 
glancing, sunlit ^vings. I remembered as a child 
having w^ondered how in heaven we should know 
one angel from another if they all wore the same 
white robes, and had wings of just one shape. It 
would have strengthened my young faith much if 
they had shown and told me that one white radiance 
might difi^er from another as far as blue and crimson. 
And still to this day one hears the shallow saying, 
A thing is either right or wrong — it must be black 
or white ; whereas the glory of one rightness may 
differ from the radiance of another as the silvery 
glitter of the gull's white wings differs from the 
dazzling ^vhiteness of the sunlit foam. The sea- 
gulls were swooping through the air and skimming 
for a moment the surface of the waves, but one 
seemed to have made her nest upon the very rim of 



44 C ONS OLA TIONS. 

the boiling caldron of Charybdis, and it was only 
on a closer look that I saw at moments just a speck 
of black rock showing momentarily through the 
surf. The sea-bird was perched upon the rock, 
and the waves washed round it, and the sil\:er wings 
shone like moonbeams, like the moon resting on a 
cushion of snowy moonlit clouds. And again and 
again, as I looked from the swirling waters to the 
still flight of the circling gulls, the two spirits of 
brightness would meet for a joyous moment as the 
sea-bird nesded among the foam. 

The cheerful voice of our host roused me at length 
from reveries in which it seemed possible that a 
world should be, with only difterences between one 
and another right, between the new creations of 
wisely loving souls and the different glories of con- 
sistent truths. I followed him, silently thinking, 
too, that it made a change in the memory of sad and 
gloomy hours to think that through them all the 
gulls had hovered in still circles over the unchang- 
ing sea. But that evening, as I read a Frenchman's 
letters, I took to heart what he says to a friend of . 
such walks as these of mine with the island spirits : 
"La memoire de ces promenades est a la fois un 
plaisir et une douleur. Cest pour mot une sensa- 
tion qiCil faut 7^e7iouvele7' sans cesse pour qu'elle 
ne devienne pas trister This is partly true of all 
pleasures, and wholly true of the pleasures of love. 
I was in love with these sweet spirits, and love 



CONS OLA TIONS. 45 

grows sad without daily renewal of the one joy of 
meeting the beloved. I had felt this already, and, 
knowing life could not be spent in the incessant re- 
newal of solitaiy delights, hencefoi-ward I sought 
the company of my fellows, and went cliffing, 
shooting, boating, swimming, with my host and the 
island fishers. 

It was not till the last evening of my stay that I 
ventured upon a solitary farewell stroll. The im- 
pression had been gaining strength in my mind that 
my first thoughts of despair had been premature and 
exaggerated. If the Arctic expedition had started 
without me, that might be a loss, but the other mis- 
fortune was the less irreparable in consequence. I 

might see the s in less than two years ; nay, I 

was beginning to think that it would be possible, 

without indiscretion, to let Mrs. know that it 

was not by choice I had failed in attentive, nay, 
assiduous, respect. I did not know their address, 
but they were going to be at Venice in June, and 
the English banker there was an old school friend 
of mine, to whom I could easily entrust a circum- 
stantial message, with a hint that he should deliver 
it in the hearing of both ladies at once. I was think- 
ing of these things, and not looking where I went, 
when suddenly I was brought up against one of the 
rough stone walls, crowned with a stubby hedge, 
which sei-\xd to divide the farms of different pro- 
prietors on the island. I had been landed before in 



46 C ONS OLA TIONS. 

a similar Impasse. A path led into the field for its 
owner's use, but none led through, as the farmers 
did not trespass on each other's land. I had no such 
scruple, and scaled the wall, walking along the top 
of it to find a gap in the hedge, where I could drop 
down on the other side. At the convenient spot I 
sat down for a moment to rest in sight of a still blue 
patch of sea. The curving down framed it as in a 
hollow, and on the left, where the land rose above 
the horizon, in clear relief against the pale blue sky, 
stood out one solitary fir-tree. One saw the sky 
betw^een the branches, and the upper outline against 
the sky ^vas clear and dark. It was resting to look 
upon. My enjoyment of the island beauties had 
grown dangerously strenuous, because I could not 
break the trick of trying to find a meaning every- 
where. This tree against the sky proved nothing, 
and all the more for that its mere contemplation 
was fraught with inexplicable pleasure. 

I went on my w^ay, breathing a blessing on the 
good householder who had tended the fir-tree in its 
youth ; and though 1 don't know that my 'prayers 
had anything to do with the result, I was as much 
pleased as if they had, when I heard that the good- 
wife's son came back the next week from a three- 
years' voyage, with all his pay in his hand, enough 
to buy the ten shares in the market-boat which old 
neighbor Nicholas had left to provide a portion 
for his only daughter. But I did not know this 



C ONS OLA TIONS. 47 

then, so my prayers were only for unspecified good 
luck. 

After re-entering the castle lands, I wandered 
through the first pine wood, bending inland by 
degrees, and just as I neared the public way I turned 
back, leaning on a grassy bank. This time I was 
silenced ; no thought of God or man, angel or faery 
magic, crossed my mind. The view was of pure, 
sober, lovely earth, and the eyes w^ere glad to rest 
unthinkingly on its stillness. From the grass bank 
on which I leant the land sloped gradually to the 
seaw^ard. There w^as not much difference in the 
level, but enough to show far round on either side 
a narrow strip of dark blue glittering sea ; in front, 
and as far round as the eye readily saw at once, be- 
tween me and the sea, there stood a low thin belt of 
firs ; and as I had seen the sky through the branches 
of the one fir-tree by the farm, so now the blue sea 
showed through the wood between the tree stems, 
and the dark green foliage against the blue stood out 
in sharp relief, and the sky above the deep blue sea 
was blue, dim with a rising haze. There was 
nothing to be thought or said, and yet weariness 
was impossible ; the vision was of embodied rest : 
the still universe seemed a temple of the Most High, 
and I fed my soul by looking. 

It was the memory of this long look that came 
back to me first, forty-eight hours afterwards, when 
I leant out of a third-flour bedroom in Bloomsbury 



48 C ONS OLA TIONS . 

to seize a glimpse of the sunset sky. On rare ex^,,,' 
ings, when the clouds have melted, there is a )j;tie 
patch of pearly-gray, between the houses, shat^i.ng 
into beryl-like transparency, and the topmost twigs 
of an old elm-tree make a feathery fringe of green 
against the sky. Here, too, is stillness, beauty and 
unreasoning peace ; and down below a neighbor has 
trained a jessamine against his bit of garden wall. 
I saw the feathery green of the new year's young 
rich shoots, and the white flowers that shine like 
stars upon a moonless night against their dark, cool 
bed. The light grew paler and paler, a short-lived 
flush of pink came and went, and then the pale gray 
deepened into night, still, calm and sweet, and the 
starry jessamine still glimmered through the shade. 
Night fell, and then I wrote to Venice. 

That was five years ago. The dutiful little note 
of answ^er that Marian wrote to me in her mother's 
name had one word more of kind regard in it than 
strict civility required, and on the faith of that word 
I worked, and hoped, and waited ; and as the years 
went on I never ceased to remember in dark hours 
that to every change of joy and sorrow in the mixed 
web of human life there is a far-away accompani- 
ment of unchanging beauty, peace and calm delight, 
for the gulls swoop as ever through the sunlit air, and 
alight upon the breaking waves, and the starry jes- 
samine shines at sunset through the London smoke. 



C ONS OLA TIONS. 49 

Marian asks why I never told her all this before. 

Are you jealous, sweetheart, of my amours with 
the spirits of the waves and flowers ? And besides, 
what was there to tell ? It is a long story, and yet 
it comes to very little. I was ill and went to the 
seaside, and the waves broke, sweet wild-flowers 
grew, and the changing sky was overhead. I saw 
visions and dreamed dreams ; but rash mortals fare 
ill who would woo the very gods. The island imps 
teased me, they hid when my heart was aching ; 
but I think, darling, they meant it kindly, for after 
eveiy trick they played me came back the memory 
of a sweet, fair face, with grave brown eyes that 
could not tease or trifle ; and if I v/as ever faithless, 
this was my sin, and you must forgive it to the 
fairies of the shore ; but for their mischievous bright 
magic I had despaired at once of life and love^ and 
— Marian — y ou . 



J 3W\. 



Thank luve that list you to his merci call. 

— James I. of Scotland. 



11. 



AND who is this new artist with a speaking- 
brush ? " said Sir Alfred Osborne, as I was 
showing him after dinner the last additions to my 
modest gallery ; " and what nut is he giving us to 
crack — is it a new version of the Choice of Her- 
cules, or a modern riddle of Sacred and Profane 
Love?" 

I said, with feigned unconcern, "The dipt)xh.^ 
Oh ! that was my wife's last birthday present. I 
hope you like it, for the fact is, I want to persuade 
you to do the artist's portrait for me." (Indeed I 
had asked him to dinner with that sole purpose in 
my machiavellian mind.) The courtly President of 
the Royal Academy bowed towards the lady of the 
house, and turned his assent into a prayer for his 
fellow-artist's gracious leave. When the portrait 
was exhibited, I heard one pamter call to another, 
" Look at this woman with the everlasting eyes." 
People who want to flatter me call my wife a femi- 
nine Watts, and she has certainly never painted 
anything better than this diptych : two single figures 
of fair women in a plain black frame. 

53 



54 A DiprrcH. 

In the First Panel. 

We had spent six weeks in the same country 
house, and were engaged to be married. I felt 
very much in love, thought Edith the sweetest girl 
in the world, and myself the happiest of men. You 
remember one of three successive summers — not 
this year or last — famous for continuous months of 
hot sunshine? The six weeks were cloudless, and 
to this day I recall them as a period of unclouded 
brightness. I had never even fancied myself in love 
before, and it seemed as if an undiscovered world 
was all at once revealed in the moment when my 
love quivered on the verge of passion at the first 
parting after, we thought, our hearts had met. I 
had to return to my work in London, and we were 
not to be together again until the autumn. We 
parted in the garden alone, and I felt that I was, 
indeed, the happiest of men when, after pressing 
her in, my arms and kissing the fair girlish cheek, a 
faint flush rose to the temples, and, burying her 
face as if she would hide from me in my own arms, 
she turned the other cheek to my kiss. 

After this the parting was a bearable distress. 
We wrote sweet letters like many another pair of 
lovers. Edith's were all that a girl's first letters to 
her love should be — tender, playful, shy, and hint- 
ing at a depth of feeling that did not yet dare to find 
a voice. I was content, without misgiving, and 



A DIPTTCH. 55 

carried about with me through each day's engage- 
ments an underlying sense of still delight, like the 
feeling with which sometimes one wakes from 
sleep, wondering what pleasant thing is waiting to 
be remembered. As if in sympathy with Edith's 
innocent faith in her lover's talents and desert, the 
chapter of accidents brought me just then first one 
happy chance and then another, and it seemed very 
pleasant to have some one that it was a duty to 
make happy by telling her pleasant things about 
one's self. I caught myself thinking that if married 
men did not confide in their wives, or if their waives 
did not sympathize with the confidences, the fault 
must be in the men. I kept back nothing, and 
Edith's sympathy was angelically ready, and quite 
as intelligent as could be expected, considering that 
the darling girl was just the desirable least bit on 
the further side of perfect wisdom in her estimate 
of the man she loved. 

Then they came to London. Easter fell early the 
next year, and w^e were to be married just after, and 
enjoy our spring in the summery south. The first 
warning or hint of a misunderstanding left me 
almost stunned with simple amazement. This was 
how it befell. Church-going was not much in 
vogue at the country house where we had met first. 
The church was ugly, too far to be a tempting walk, 
too near to break the coachman's Sabbath. On two 
Sundays, I remembered now, I had ridden across 



56 A DIPTYCH. 

country to see my own people, and so had not had 
to give an account of my doings in regard to pubHc 
worship. Then the first Sunday of my stay Edith 
had perhaps only thought of me as one young 
heathen among the rest, and the last two weeks 
w^e had made a compromise, not too painful to her 
conscience. She stayed at home with me in the 
morning, and in the evening I went to church with 
her and sang Ken's and Keble's evening hymns 
with some real devotional feeling. Who has not 
felt as if it would be good for him to have good 
angels always as near as heaven seems on a sum- 
mer's evening as the church-bells ring for vespers ; 
wild rose and honeysuckle trail from the shady 
hedgerows, the footpath through the meadow leads 
only to the village church, and what if each stile is 
blocked by a rustic pair of sweethearts, so long as 
the accomplished child of the gay world by our side 
is ready to answer our longer, more exacting woo- 
ing as satisfactorily as these buxom damsels do the 
laconic "• Wiltha.'*" of their slouching swains? 

Now in London, Sunday was my chief holiday, 
and I had not cared to waste it in sitting under 
eminent preachers. Perhaps it was stupid of me. 
I had no home or sisters to show me the ways of 
this feminine world, but it had simply never 
occurred to me that it could make any difference to 
Edith how much or little I believed of the things 
she went to church to say. Once or twice we had 



A DIPTYCH. 57 

had a little playful sparring as I thought ; as I have 
a soul on earth to save, I thought it was no more ; 
and I was at a loss to guess what troubled her when 
one Thursday Edith seemed shy and silent, and on 
the Saturday as I spoke of what we would do and 
talk about to-morrow, she blushed and looked 
embarrassed, and then said, •• Would you mind not 
coming to-morrow ; I want a long talk ^vith you, 
but not to-morrow, please ; after Sunday, which 
day next ? " She seemed unhappy, but I thought it 
was only some girlish trifle, perhaps some woman 
friend she wanted to see and did not like to put 
before my visit ; but since she was ill at ease, I 
would not even notice the little nothing that had 
come between us, and planned at once a drive, a 
visit we could pay together, and a walk which, 
though suburban, was solitary on week-days. 

All this was agreed upon for Tuesday. Edith 
was herself again by then ; we talked as usual 
through the drive, paid our duty visit to an aristo- 
cratic godmother, who received me graciously, and 
then, bidding the carriage meet us half a mile 
farther on, we were alone at last. The field before 
us was bleak, the wind blew freshly over the brow 
of the hill we skirted, and the birds were singing ; 
we met two roughs with an air of Ratcliff High- 
way about them, and lines and cages in their hands 
that implied an uncomfortable threat against the 
songsters' peace. The hedges had a sun-dried look, 



58 A DIPTTCH. 

and the sheep's wool was ragged and smutty ; but 
the new brick-field and its latest emanations were 
behind us, the lightly trodden footpath had a rural 
bogginess, we saw the sky, we were together and 
alone. 

Maybe some foolishness passed between us, and 
then her eyes met mine with happy frankness. I 
said. All was well, was it not.? I knew nothing 
was the matter last week, but just for a moment I 
had been frightened by the fancy — supposing any- 
thing should be } She said that was just it ; she 
had been frightened — foolishly, she was sure, and 
now- she did not like to tell me what it was ; — 
should she tell me now } I was sure to say it was 
only foolishness, but she didn't mind that, since it 
wasn't really true. 

" Since what was not really true? " I asked with- 
out the shadow of anxiety. 

She blushed and hesitated, and said, Would I 
forgive her, she ought not to have believed what 
any one else said — she didn't believe it, but it had 
made her unhappy only to hear it said that I — 

As I am a sinner, I expected some such unlikely 
slander as that I drove my horses with a bearing 
rein, or had been seen shooting at Hurlingham. The 
ghosts of my god-parents forgive me ! It was with 
much the same sense of relief and irrelevancy that I 
heard at last the end of the stammering sentence. 
It was foolish of her to make so much of it ; she 



A DIPTTCH. 59 

had thought since that Mr. So-and-so wasn't speak- 
ing seriously when he said it, but at first it had 
frightened her. "You know," she added shyly, ' ' we 
have never yet spoken about those things, and so I 
couldn't feel as if I knew for myself all that you feel 
— I only know you are so good. I never ought to 
have doubted." 

"But you haven't told me yet, sweetheart, of what 
the calumniator accused me.^" 

It was pretty to see the flash of illogical delight 
that shone through her tears as she cried, " I knew 
it ! I was sure you would say it was a calumny. 
Forgive me, darling, it was my love that made it 
seem so horrible, and yet I ought — if I had only 
loved you as I ought — to have known that it could 
not be true." 

I suppose it is some wretched sui*\'ival of the brute 
that makes a man feel stupidly as if he were some- 
how a finer fellow himself when the woman he loves 
is the least bit of a (darling) goose. I felt a momen- 
tary temptation to test my power by accepting this 
blank cheque of acquittal, and promising to forgive 
my darling this once if she would ne\er believe 
any harm of me again. I thought of this only as a 
passing jest, — of course she would tell me what it 
was all about at some future time, and we should 
laugh together over our first and last attempt at a 
" serious explanation." 

Fortunately for both our lives, this slighting im- 



6o A DIPTTCH. 

pulse revolted me as a disloyalty to my heart's young 
queen ; and as we pulled ourselves together v^ith a 
joint consciousness of having behaved with a some- 
thing less than our usual decorum, I took up the 
interrupted conversation in the most matter-of-fact 
tone I could command. " So-and-so is really a 
good friend of mine ; what was it he shocked you 
by saying about me ? " 

And she replied, this time without hesitation, " He 
spoke as if you didn't believe in the Bible. Lady 

said something about your review of Brugsch's 

' History of Egypt,' and Mr. So-and-so laughed, and 
said — I couldn't help hearing him, and it was that 
that made me so unhappy ; I couldn't forget the 
very words, and yet I didn't like to tell you about 
it, because that looked as if I had more belief in him 
than in you. The words were, ' Why, j^ou don't 
suppose Arthur takes all the A. V. for Gospel } ' " 
She went on, talking rather fast, as if to give herself 
confidence, for I was silent and taken by surprise : 
*"' Of course it was foolish of me to take to heart 
what was said so lightly. I suppose it would be a 
heresy to take the books of the Law, even in the 
Authorized Version, for ' Gospel' in the true sense, 
but it hurt me to think that a friend of yours — and 
you say he is a real friend — should speak of you as 
if you were not one of us. I wondered" — here 
again her voice fell, and she blushed and hesitated, 
and then half whispered, leaning on my arm the 



A DIPTTCH. 6 1 

while, " I wondered whether I was wrong to let 
our marriage come so near without speaking of 
these things. You know I had hoped we should 
have the full sei*\'ice, but I was afraid to ask if you 
would mind " — 

There is a degree of misunderstanding that reme- 
dies itself by dint of its very completeness. I did 
not know in the very least what Edith was talking 
about, but her words called up the thought of a doubt 
that had crossed my own mind about our marriage 
rites, and I answered the suggestion of my own 
thoughts rather than hers. I drew her a little closer, 
and spoke so gravely that the poor child's hopes 
beat high. 

" Of course, darling," I said, '"• I had not expected 
you to go with me in quite everything I think : 
people may love and trust each other without that. 
Perhaps " — I was soon to be ashamed of this conceit 
— " perhaps I can more easily enter into your ideas 
than translate mine into the language you would 
think orthodox, and that is why I thought it best 
not to raise any discussion about our marriage. So 
long as the form is legal, that is all that signifies ; 
and I felt that it would be selfish of me to insist on 
my own preferences in a matter that would make so 
much unpleasantness for you. And besides, I 
thought you yourself, dear, might have some feeling 
against a civil marriage." 

She looked at me with startled, uncomprehending 



62 A DIPTYCH. 

eyes. I had given up the idea of proposing that we 
should be married by the Registrar, because of the 
scandal it would cause in the family, and because I 
thought it pedantic to make the sei-\'ices of that 
estimable official an integral part of the Rationalist 
creed. I did not guess that Edith had never heard 
of a civil marriage, except as something vaguely 
wicked, done in tracts by infidel working men, who 
are subsequently persuaded by the curate to recon- 
cile themselves to religion and morality by marrying 
their old wives over again in church, in an atmos- 
phere of penitent, religious awe, appropriate to a 
deferred sacrament, like adult baptism. Edith had 
understood me as little as I understood that her anx- 
iety turned all upon the question which sometimes 
fills half a volume in High Church novels for the 
young, — was the bridegroom a good-enough 
churchman to wish the full Communion Service 
added to that for the solemnization of Holy Matri- 
mony ? 

The extent of our misunderstanding began to dawn 
first on me, and then I set myself to explain. God 
forgive me ! I still had a sense of capable condescen- 
sion, as if we were acting Faust and Gretchen in the 
Catechism scene. Edith listened, and I supposed 
was following my lucid rendering of the poet's 
Name ist Schall imd Laut^ when presently she 
stopped, loosed my arm, and faced me with a piti- 
ful look. "Arthur, I don't think I am clever 



A DIPTTCH. 6^ 

enough to understand all that. Does it mean " — 
she paused, rather as if she were the martyr called 
upon to make confession with a stake in sight — 
''does it mean that you believe in God and our 
blessed Saviour, or does it mean something else ? " 

At last, not without rage at my own blindness, I 
saw all the danger. My heart sank. I said, "• Edith, 
sweetheart ! my first and only love ! tell me, Edith, 
now, at once — do you love me, dear?" 

She laid her hand on my arm ; perhaps I had 
never before felt such a longing for the love that still 
delayed to answer. I had been so sure of my happi- 
ness, I had never before felt the aching need of a 
woman's all-embracing, all-overmastering tender- 
ness, and instead of the longed-for, self-forgetting 
welcome, she looked at me still as if we were 
leagues and centuries apart, and she asked again, 
with the same frightened, pitiful look, " Forgive me 
for being so stupid. I don't quite understand. 
Does it mean that you are — that you believe — in 
Christianity or no ? " 

Seeing her distress, I had no right to complain 
of the chill I felt at having my own appeal un- 
answered. The rest of our conversation was diffi- 
cult ; she asked me to let her drive home alone ; 
she would write ; we must meet another time. I 
did not feel the less like a fool for being plante la 
in a suburban road, at an unknown distance from a 
cabstand and Charing Cross. Must a man pass or 



64 A DIPTYCH. 

set a theological examination before he can offer to 
the girl of his choice ? If Edith had had a father 
confessor on whom to lay the blame, I should have 
known what to be at, and could have contented my- 
self with wishing to wring his neck. W'hat was 
the use of being in the right if one couldn't make its 
rightness plain to a gentle, loving girl ? 

The next fortnight was a penitential season- In- 
terviev^s and pourpa^'lers succeeded each other. 
Edith's family were averse to a rupture on grounds 
of worldly expediency, and helped to prolong the 
purgatory by their anxiety to find some ground of 
compromise. The mother as good as asked me to 
use a little brief hypocrisy, and touched the borders 
of good taste in her anxiety to explain ho^v entirely 
our two interests were one. It is bad for a girl to 
be talked about as having broken off an engage- 
ment ; but if it came to that ("as we all hope it 
mayn't"), the real reason was sure to get known 
too, and that could not fail to do a man some harm 
in his profession. As it happened, I knew that a 
scandal of this sort would do me a certain consider- 
able and special injur}^ at once, but I answered 
grimly it would signify the less if I had no wife de- 
pending on my success. After this reach of dis- 
tracting uncertainty, it was settled I was to see Edith 
once more. It was a last hope. Would she or I 
take back something of the words that made any 
answer but a farewell impossible to the other ; or 



A DIPTYCH. 65 

would she say, as I had all along, let us think apart, 
if we must, so long as we can love together? 

Edith had wished to leave London while the 
question was pending, and I went to see her at their 
country house. It was a still, mild October day ; 
the red and yellow of the beechwoods alternated 
with the dark evergreen firs. There seemed to be 
tlie same fragrance in the autumn noon as in those 
summer evenings when her eyes first began to watch 
for mine. vShe took me into the garden. A low 
garden-seat stood in a solitary sunny corner. The 
unf---'*quented path w^as soft with a thick carpet of 
fallen lir-ncedles, and the gardener's boy had left a 
swopt-up mound of them just by the seat. I leant 
on this, that I might look up into her face as she sat. 
The shadows lengthened while we talked — less 
painfully, perhaps, than once or tsvice before, for 
neither wished to make the inevitable harder than 
needed to the other. But it was inevitable, and at 
last tne moment for the last parting came. 

I have never seen Edith since, and as we parted 
then so she lives in my memory. As she lives in 
my memory, so you see her on the panel now. She 
w^as standing up, almost tall, very fair, with gray 
blue eyes, in which tears stood, but w^ould .lot fall. 
Her hair was very long and soft and waving, red- 
brown in the darkest shadows, and bright, bright 
gold for the rest. Whatever fashions came or went, 
I do not see how she could ever wear her hair ex- 



66 A DIPTTCH. 

cept just so, in one soft hanging double twist, that 
looked the only right way for a woman with soft 
hair that waved. That afternoon she wore some 
soft yellow-brown silk, full and simple like the robes 
of Angelico's angels, and I seem to remember a 
gold chain round the neck and a spray of myrtle, 
and some pale yellow lace above the gold bracelet I 
had given her, and the white hand I might never 
kiss again. 

Our last words had almost been said ; she stood 
up, and I a pace or two away. A stack of withered 
bracken filled the space between the tree stems be- 
hind, and a spreading beech intercepted the light 
of the western sun. Her figure appears before me 
now, erect against this russet background. The 
hands are half outstretched, as if refusing to wring 
themselves in helpless anguish ; and in her eyes, 
through the tears, there is still the same far-away 
look that chilled my soul on the day when she did 
not answer my first and last appeal — a longing, 
pleading, unrelenting look ; and while the tender 
lips seem to breathe, "Will you not stay with 
me.^" the outstretched hands and far-off eyes utter 
the doom of banishment, " I may not come with 
you." 

And so, as I left her, I see her still ; and through 
the angry impatience of a lover who had counted for 
less than he thought, I could not but respect the 
single-hearted strength that drove me out. She had 



A DIPTYCH. 67 

had no doubt or struggle. If I did not or could not 
see the truth as she did, it did not seem so much to 
her that we must part, as rather that we had never 
met. The keenest part of the blow to me was 
knowinor that she had never for a moment thouo^ht 
of lovinj]: me too much to care w^hether I was to ^o 
to hell or heaven. But at the moment when I re- 
sented this most strongly — what right had she to 
accept my love if hers was so slight a thing .' — the 
just afterthought obtruded itself too : Had /felt any 
temptation to change myself, my life, my creed, for 
her love's sole sake .'' 

In the Second Paizel 

Was it all a horrible illusion, and had we never 
loved at all ; and if not, what then w^as love ; w^ho 
could tell, did any know? I looked all round, and 
thought what Edith and I had meant, for love was 
more like it than most of the substitutes that seemed 
to pass current in the world unchecked. Was it 
then a loveless world, and happiness the share only 
of boys and girls whose bubbles had not burst as 
yet ? 

I did not stop to ask such questions. With that 
last fair vision fresh in memory. I left England, 
grimly conscious that a man in my plight might 
fairl}^ be expected to earn his allotted fate by start- 
ing promptly on some headlong road to ruin. But 
to me this seemed a no?i sequitur. What though 



68 A DIPTTCH. 

Edith were twice the heartless fanatic I had a right 
to call her : what was there in that to give me a new 
taste for brandy or the society of cads ? If the best 
of women were not quite good enough for the needs 
of men, was it worth while to seek deliverance 
among the worst ? One must live every day among 
pleasures that turn to vice in their excess, to go to 
ruin this way when the check of daily motives for 
restraint is loosed. One is not now held only to 
decency by a single knot, easy to cut. 

I was content with the common distractions of 
travel oft^ the beaten track in Italy. The chestnut 
woods of the Apennines were kind to me, and the 
girls had all black hair ; it was a folly, but I left 
one pretty village unvisited because an English 
family with golden-haired bambini was said to be 
lodging there. The weeks passed, and brought a 
kind of calm. I wondered whether I was ceasing 
to dread the sight of my kind, or forgetting that the 
sight might come — almost any day now, for I was 
nearing Florence, and could hardly reach untrodden 
ground again without taking to the railway. I had 
been following the moment's impulse, and without 
much purpose bade my last host drive me in his 
calessino to the Pontassieve station. I thought 
vaguely of picking up the fast evening train to 
Arezzo and then wandering off again. But when 
the Fates are ready for us, small chances will serve 
tiieir turn. On the platform, waiting for the train 



A DIPTTCH. 69 

to Florence, was a man I knew, a good fellow, 
officer in a rather fost regiment ; and as he recog- 
nized me with effusion, I noticed he was not alone ; 
there ^vas with him the most beautiful woman I 
ever saw, and she had waving gold-brown hair. 

I tried to escape, but the good fellow held me 
fast. "You must know the Diva," he said. I, 
with unseemly emphasis, "No, no, xo ! " He 
said, "Why not.^" and I, "I don't like golden 
hair." 

At this he laughed cheerfully, and grasping me 
by main force, called to the woman whose hair was 
like Edith's, " Signora, Signora ! come and chain 
this fugitive. , I want him in Florence, and he 
oflers to run away because you have golden hair." 

Then, with the most musical voice, save one, I 
have ever heard, she said, "Would you run away 
from me because some one else had golden hair.^ 
Come and see the red-gold of the oranges in the 
sunset glow, and the pure gold dust of the fragrant 
lemon blossoms, and after that you \vill call the hair 
of women brown or yellow, or the shade of dusty 
ashes. Come, come, come ! but we will not wait 
for the train," and like some enchantress whose look 
is a spell, she pointed to an open carriage just out- 
side the barrier ; and without excuse or explanation, 
in an instant the young Italian who was driving had 
turned his companions adrift, gave the reins to his 
groom, and took his place by our side. " Have 



70 A DIPTYCH. 

you told him to the villa?" said the Diva; " w^e 
four dine together to-night." 

Eleanora sang to us that night ; we saw the stars 
come out, and the ripe lemons shone like silver in 
the moonlight. The villa seemed a palace, and I 
breathed freely. It was all as unlike what I was 
fleeing from as the massy jet plaits of the Tuscan 
peasant girls ; for tables, here and there were carved 
chests and slabs of porphyry, the polished fragments 
of an ancient bath ; for chairs, cushions of every 
size, and shape, and substance, and no other furni- 
ture but flowers, easels, and instruments of music. 
She made the Italian sing to us some Neapolitan 
songs of the people, and she prayed my friend to 
write down the air of two that were new to her. 
Then she turned to me and said, " Did she use you 
very ill, that fair one with locks of gold?" 

And I, to whom my oldest friends had never 
dared so much as to seem to think, let alone speak, 
of our broken engagement — I answered readily, 
" Not at all ; she is a charming girl, and she threw 
me over four ramoui' de Dieu. Novv^ I come to 
think of it " — and I made this discovery as I spoke 
— " the only thing that troubles me in the matter is 
a misgiving v/hether le bon Dieu \m\\\ be as kind to 
her as I should have been." 

" Is that the only reason," and her eyes laughed, 
" why you don't like golden hair? " 

'^ No," I answered, still without a shade of reluc- 



A DIPTTCH. 71 

tance ; "it reminds me of the troublesome problem 
I have never yet solved to my mind's contentment, 
whether Edith ever loved me at all, or only thought 
she did ; and w^hat love is, and whether anybody 
knows ? " 

Eleanora made herself a deeper nest in the pale 
green cushions, and she turned the nearest lamp 
round, so that the light fell away from us. " If you 
ask me as an oracle," she said, " I will answer : — 
Half of Edith's nature loved half of yours, and she 
and you did not kno\v there was any more of either ; 
and what love is takes many days to tell, and few 
there be that have ears to understand the tale." 

At eleven the Italian rose to go. I went w^ith 
my friend to his hotel, and acquiesced in plans that 
took for granted I should stay in Florence. Twice 
more I saw the Diva. Those who had never been 
favored by her notice laughed, and hinted her favor 
was given lightly and to many ; but I have heard 
her spoken of, and never Avithout a shade of tender 
respect, by men w^ho w^ere pointed at as her dis- 
carded lovers. To me she w^as generous and good. 
Nothing passed between us but talk, rash and idle 

if you please; but I entered the Via still sore 

and sick at heart, and I left it healed and strong for 
the manifold chances of life. 

We soon gave up the attempt to converse in 
English, the language of reserve and reticence ; she 
spoke in Italian and I in French ; thus we were 



72 A DIPTTCH. 

botli free to think as well as to speak what came to 
us. I said again, "Did Edith love me or I her? 
What is love, and how to build it on a sure founda- 
tion ? Can immortal love lodge with mortals, and 
infinite passion hold together the narrow boundaries 
of single souls? Is it our first wisdom to renounce 
the dream, or with closed eyes to say we are not 
yet awake ; or can we, seeing and knowing, not in 
dreams, but alive and waking, can we find a truth 
fairer and sweeter than an everlasting fjiir sweet 
dream? Tell me this," I said, " O vv^ise Diotima ! 
and if indeed love is not all a dream, let me be your 
scholar, and show me how to love." 

She said, not all at once, but as my questions or 
my silence prompted, "I have known three patterns 
of happy, life-long love, and two were from your 
country. The world would be different if there 
were more like these, but the chances are strong 
against us. There must be generosity, readiness to 
apprehend and to conciliate, a high level of personal 
qualities before any man or woman is safely to be 
trusted with another's welfare. A small mind may 
love vehemently, a mean soul tenaciously, and a 
fickle one tenderly for a time ; but the capacity for 
complete and lasting love carries a patent of nobility, 
and here our difficulty begins again. For the de- 
mands of a full and richly developed nature multi- 
ply, and as individuals differentiate themselves — as 
your philosophers would say — the chances multiply 



A DIPTTCH. 73 

against complete and spontaneous sympathy between 
two several natures that have grown up apart. Per- 
fect love grows choicer but more rare as new subtle- 
ties of feeling are fed by thoughts and wishes ever 
growing wider and more manifold ; and because 
men cannot content themselves to be unloved, some 
seek to build up their own soul's life by loving for a 
while, now^ here, now there, the features that do not 
meet in the one perfect form of a single constant 
love. As I speak, you think of Goethe, and there 
have been less famous women with a heart's history 
not unlike his. The world's chance of happiness in 
love was greater when simpler lives made simpler 
feelings, which had the same history in a thousand 
souls at once, so that any two out of the thousand 
might pair harmoniously together." 

I said, " Shall wx then leave this foolish world 
that works so hard to earn its discontent, and find a 
place where the hands of time stand still upon the 
dial and rejoice in the easy loves of bygone days.^" 

She answered, ''If we could! But an appetite 
once felt lives on till it is starved or satiated, and 
there are few but ha\'e felt once the desire for a diffi- 
cult pleasure." 

'^ And yet, what is easier than to begin to love.^" 

"Ay, truly," said the Diva, and her full voice 
rang out the assent like a challenge ; " but is it easy 
to answer all the questions you hurled at me anon } 
Consider, too, that love itself has manifold moods, 



74 A DIPTTCH. 

and since all of these must be shared or answered, 
perfect love can hardly be where the soul's voice has 
a narrow compass. There is the hungry passion of 
covetousness, and the no less eager hunger of devo- 
tion ; and one must be fed with joyous rapture, and 
the other with a free acceptance. And then it is 
not easy to pass unchilled from rapturous enjoyment 
to the calm delight of loving neighborhood, nor to 
accept boundless devotion without dulling the keen 
edge of gratitude which makes acceptance sweet. 
They know little of love " — her voice was like soft 
music, and at each pause the air seemed filled with 
the echo of a fiir-off minor air — " they know little 
of love who know only its one face of midsummer 
sunshine ; the eternal sun has its returning morning, 
night and noonday, and the softest light may come 
through earth-born vapors ; none know the true face 
of love who cannot bear the changing revolutions of 
its days and seasons. Some, that sorrow can unite, 
grow indifferent when middling fortune gives ease 
for sober years ; some, whose hearts beat together 
in the sunshine, cease to keep pace as the vibrations 
cool and slacken, and in their slow recurrence feel 
more and more forcibly the check when the lagging 
foot of the companion foils out of step." 

She was looking out of window, not at, but far 
away over, the rich luxuriance of the Tuscan spring 
vegetation, and the dim purple horizon. 

I said, "• Signora, as you speak one must believe, 



I 



A DIPTYCH. "J^ 

as one believes the Siren's song. It is sweet to 
hear ; but tell me, is there anything more than diffi- 
culty, such difficulties as these, in the commonplace 
days of the real working world? " 

She roused herself and looked at me with laugh- 
ng wakeful eyes : '' There is for those to whom the 
grace of love is given, and they " — here the laugh 
died, and something of defiance, if not of scorn, took 
its place in her glance — ''and they to whom the 
grace of love is given are few and far between." 
She looked me in the eyes and said, " I think you 
want to know the truth : the truth is — it is difficult 
to love perfectly at all, and most difficult to love 
perfectly the living love, who is imperfect, like the 
common world, till she and you love perfectly. But 
it is a real love, and not romantic dreaming, that 
gives life its crown of glory. Marriage — are you 
enough of a musician to feel all that this implies? — 
marriage is like a concert with two conductors. 
All the thousand and one passions and interests of 
life are crowding the orchestra, and there is endura- 
ble peace if the two choruses are taught to sing in 
unison. But the true harmony of the spheres, the 
perfect music of love in life, is made when the two 
several melodies complete each other, and a third 
strain of fuller, richer, wondrous beauty rises upon 
the thrice-blessed ears of those who can order two 
full lives with one joint omnipotent love. Love 
may last from an hour to a lifetime ; but if you 



76 A DIPTTCH. 

would have love in marriage, seek a v/oman who 
can help you to live as well as to love." 

I thought, and that day it seemed natural to think 
aloud : ' ' But must not married love be equal ? and 
how can a man help a woman in her own life ? " 

She smiled approvingly : "When a man has mod- 
esty, he is not far from the kingdom of love. You 
are right that a woman is not helped to live her 
own life by the mere acceptance of the devotion she 
begins by offering to the man she loves. The ful- 
ness of power and life comes to her as she feels that 
the stay of her devotion is an inspiring force, with- 
out which the fulness of power and life would be 
wanting to her lover as well as to herself. But 
passionate love is of no sex. I have known men 
love like women, women love like men, and men 
and women who loved through the whole scale of 
rapture and devotion, from sullen bass to the so- 
prano that fades upon the ear for utter shrillness. 
It is true of all alike that they do not give love its 
due by the mere acceptance of the offered gift ; un- 
less their lives are fed by its acceptance, they rank 
but with the unloved many, the proselytes of the 
gate, to whom the entrance of the Holy of Holies is 
a forbidden mystery." 

I almost wondered at the complete acceptance 
commanded by these subtle doctrines ; as I listened 
it seemed that I was learning by the Platonic route 
of reminiscence. Nothing seemed strange or doubt- 



A DIPTYCH. 77 

ml, and I thouGfht of Edith as I miorht of a sister 
when I said, " She could have lived in unison with 
a simple-hearted gentleman of her own faith." 

With a faint inflection of impatience Eleanora 
answ^ered, '• Are you afraid I should think you in- 
constant if you forget Edith for an hour? " 

And then it was my turn to smile, " Why should 
I forget what has nothing ugly about it ? Your wis- 
dom is reconciling me to myself and Edith ; but 
tell me, what is constancy in love ? for you say, and 
I believe, that love is feeble and like to die that can- 
not changfe with the chanofins: seasons." 

She paused longer than usual, then she rose, 
paced once or twice up the room, and then passed 
through the v/indow to a balcony commanding the 
same view, only here we saw it stretching far round 
on either hand. I followed and stood some paces 
behind her, then she shivered and said, " Let me 
show vou mv watch-tower." We re-entered the 
house, and she led me up-stairs, through a pretty 
room, half studio, half boudoir, to a circular door in 
the corner. 

In the corner of the house outside one saw, as it 
were, half a round turret projecting beyond the 
southeast angle, and the inner' half of the round 
corner tower was formed by this door. I followed 
her into a tiny circular cell ; all the outer wall was 
window, and there was no furniture except a few 
cushions on the floor and window sills. She sat 



78 A DIPTYCH. 

down carelessly at the foot of the embrasure, leaning 
her arm on the ledge, and then she said, " I brought 
you here because this is the one spot in the world 
where I have never felt cross, wronged, misunder- 
stood, unfortunate, unblessed." There seemed a 
strange incongruity in such words on the lips of a 
creature so gloriously endowed, not with beauty 
only and an angel's voice, but with a wise and tol- 
erant tenderness that seemed fit to sweeten countless 
lives. 

She went on, "I sought the protection of the 
genius loci because I am more often provoked by 
talk of constancy than anything else of which men 
talk in ignorance. A constant love is one that 
knows how to change ; for growth is change, and 
living love must grow ; and there are changes which 
are not growth and yet not unfaithfulness. What 
is called the treachery of women is often only their 
failure to respond to a change in the lover's mood, 
which they could not foresee, and have no cause to 
share. But the changeful ness of perfect love has 
its root in this — every change in the loved one is 
foreseen and every changing feeling shared. No 
change within or without, on either part, can take 
perfect love at unawares, or make the eternal change 
its unchanging nature ; every other w^ish and hope 
and passionate impulse may be called upon to change 
and answer with immovable fidelity to the call, in 
order that, by their death, love may renew its life, 



A DIPTYCH. 79 

and the one faithless change be escaped — of ceas- 
ing to love the very soul and body that had once 
been known, and loved as it w*as known to be. I 
am angry often with those who take the name of 
love m vam, because they call it inconstancy if love 
is withdrawn from the detected hypocrite. Not he, 
but the something better that he seemed to be, was 
loved ; and even if, instead of hypocrisy in another, 
there is ignorance and blindness in ourselves — even 
then, when we see too late, love at all costs must be 
ti*ue, and it is profaning a sacrament to ape the 
sacred feeling towards one who has no right to call 
it forth." 

She spoke with heat, and the missing sweetness 
of her tones left me free to answer instead of acqui- 
escing silently. I questioned, "'Is it not a duty to 
assure ourselves that we kno\v the real true nature 
before we lead another to look to us for love } " 

She spoke more calmly, and with a half smile. 
"What is called the inconstancy of men maybe 
defended too. It is often only a sign of the un- 
changeableness of their ideal — they find too late 
that the vision is not realized where they thought, 
and they go to seek elsewhere. You ask if they are 
wrong } Perhaps they are not right ; but is it then 
more right never to risk a generous trust that may 
justify itself in time? If it were forbidden to love 
in faith, can you promise that all should have sight 
enough of good to love by } No ; love must dare 



So A DIPTl'CH. 

— dare to hope and dare to suffer. It is easy, is it 
not," she added, ''to speak of bold endurance in this 
sheltered nook ? Can you wonder that I feel as if 
pain and trouble could never enter here, only friend- 
ship and the deep interest that springs from friendly 
contact with the deepest interests of hearts like 
enough our own to understand and be understood?" 

I said, "This nook of yours, Signora, has been to 
me a very haven of refuge from a storm that left me 
rudderless. Through all my life I shall feel as if 
there were some natural bond between the uplifting 
of a moral incubus {did Edith love me or I her?) 
and the intense luminous blue sky with the gnarled 
bough and silver-tipped leaves of your olive tree 
against it, framing the sunny plain and the dim 
purple hills far off." 

The expression of her face was no longer plain to 
read. I looked at her questioningly and said, "It 
is hard to have nothing to offer in return for such 
fair memories." 

She answered, "And you have nothing?" look- 
ing at me still with a perplexing gaze, half curiosity, 
expectancy, and whether invitation or reproach was 
more than I could tell. 

She was incomprehensibly beautiful with this 
sphinx-like expression on her perfect features ; and 
though I had only spoken of the background to the 
vision I must remember, I promised myself to see 
always her graceful form in a gray embrasure be- 



A DIPTTCH. 8l 

twecn me and the olive bough across the sunlit 
sky. I was looking at her as one looks at an in- 
animate scene of beauty, and started in confusion 
when she answered my looks with a questioning 
''Well?" 

I answered, as I had not meant, " You have been 
very good to me, Signora." 

She smiled more naturally, and said, " Not very ; 
less than all does not count for anything. And it 
is an awesome thought how much there is room for 
between men and women before they come near to 
having helped each other. There are so many to 
whom, once for a time, a near relation seems the 
one thing needful, but there are not many to whom 
it continues so all through life's length ; and such is 
the force of time and worldly w^orries, that after a 
few years have sped it is not so easy as you might 
think to tell the difference between those who have 
seen once and never. Many put to sea who dare 
not cross the ocean, but I think it is not for those 
who spend their lives in sight of land to speak of 
the glory and loveliness of the deep." 

Surely I did not hear her say — I dreamt that 
it was with such a look as hers that eyes might 
say — " Shall we? Nay, but let us tempt the deep 
together ! " Her eyes were like those of a prophetess 
beholding the manifold secrets of the deep. I knelt 
and clasped her clasped hands in mine. She may 
know — I cannot say — whether I felt a moment's 



82 A DIPTTCH, 

wild desire to tempt the deep that day, and find my 
liappiness at once or never. What I said, kneeling 
before her in simple adoration of her beauty and 
gentle graciousness, was but a plain and stupid ac- 
knowledgment of so much grace. '^ Eleanora," I 
said, " your beauty is to Edith's as the summer sun 
to the spring twilight, and because 3^ou have stooped 
from your throne to show me kindness, all rever- 
ence and worship that a man can lay at the feet of 
women is due to you from me. Stay, sweet god- 
dess, on your pedestal ; it is not you, it is myself I 
cannot trust. It is easy to want faster than one 
has strength to merit, and I reverence you too much, 
Signora, to risk counting in your memory as the 
hero of one more detected illusion. Do you in gen- 
erous dreams think of the possibilities I dare not 
aim at as of something that might have been if it 
had been ours to meet, as some meet, young and 
free, knowing enough, and not having felt too much 
and lately to be able to launch forth upon the ocean 
of life in common and limitless love "i Whether the 
best there is comes to us, to me, hereafter or not 
at all, let me think always of a best that might have 
been ; and at least, if there is nothing on earth good 
enough to make the best for you, let me be guiltless 
in the day of that sad proof." 

She said, ' ' Then we part now ; even my charmed 
turret falls under the common doom." 

And I, "No, a thousand times no. Wronged, 



A DIPTYCH. 83 

misunderstood, unfortunate, unblessed ; may those 
dooms be ever as far from you as tliey are now ; 
only, as the poet says, let us leave ' a good to die 
with dim-descried ; ' and I, who have missed once 
the good I sought, wish selfishly that if you miss or 
do not seek that self-same good, you shall think of 
me and the missing good together." 

She said, "I wish my turret was the palace of 
truth." Then,^with nonchalance, as she gave me 
her hand in farewell, " You know your way to the 
garden? " 

I dared not linger after this dismissal ; so it was 
but the vision of one anxious moment that I had to 
bear away with me. I have never seen Eleanora 
since, and as we parted then so she lives in my 
memory. I think the eyes whose language I had so 
often failed to read were hazel-brown ; they looked 
at me with questioning sadness, half reproach, half 
invitation. Why are you not worthy to stay, here 
and now, to love your best forever? And yet it 
was neither reproach nor invitation so much as a 
dark sadness like the leaden casket, '' which rather 
threatens than does promise aught." Oh, the sad- 
ness that there should be an ineffable bliss on earth, 
and men not bold to seize it ! 

All this, sadness, anger and tender sweetness, lent 
an inscrutable depth to the meaning of her gaze as 
I saw her leaning in the embrasure. Her dress was 
of a pale greenish-blue velvet, stamped with ara- 



<54 A DIPTYCH. 

besque figures. I know the sleeves were short ; a 
woman's wrist is sometimes strangely beautiful ; she 
had opened the casement and gathered half a hand- 
ful of heliotropes, which encroached from a near 
balcony. The flowers rested against her dress, and 
I saw nothing but her one figure, framed in the 
embrasure of the window, with its tiny background 
of intense blue sky, and just one olive branch, with 
its narrow leaves and soft gray-green shadows, 
crossing the azure, and arching over the sad, radi- 
ant, enigmatic face. 

I am not going to say how many years had passed 
betwen these two partings and my wife's last birth- 
day gift. She had seen Edith at church and Elea- 
nora at the opera, and I had photographs of both. 
I gave her the key of my Blue Beard's closet before 
we m.arried, and I thought she had made a pretty 
use of it. 

Sir Alfred Osborne's portrait of my wife hangs 
above the diptych. She is painted without sur- 
roundings on a background of pure shadow, such as 
the old masters of portraiture love. She is leaning 
backwards in her chair, and her pose is so arranged 
that she looks down upon the gazer, and yet her 
eyes look fully into his. And her gaze has neither 
sadness nor complaint, but the repose of unchang- 
ing, confident tenderness. She does not seek, or 



A DIPTTCH. 85 

call or banish ; she makes welcome her secure pos- 
session. 

I do not care to show these paintings to every 
one ; but in showing them to the few, I gather from 
the way in which they look at all three faces whether 
or no they have }'et found out for themselves that a 
woman's eyes are the windows of the palace of ever- 
lastinsr love. 



u 



lumi %m 3nh Mnnh-tu^r 



S)egrt)egen and) nic^tg fc^recfUd^cr ift, atS bie Utciffen^eit I)an^ 
bein ju fe!^en, 

— ©oetl^e. 



III. 



IT was the time of one of our periodical scares ; 
there was a ' ' crisis " in the East, and to keep 
up the spirits of a patriotic population, the troops 
in London were being put through an extra quan- 
tity of manoeuvring in Hyde Park. I saw no rea- 
son to give up my daily morning constitutional from 
the Albert Gate to the Marble Arch by a meander- 
ing- diagonal and back, and I started as usual at 
nine o'clock on the anniversary of a day that had 
rather melancholy associations. It was a morning 
to make one forget them. The leaf buds were 
opening fast, but only the chestnuts had reached 
their full greenness ; the elms were still tipped with 
promises, and seemed to argue with us that spring 
was only coming — not even yet quite here. All 
distances were lost in mist, and even the brightest 
lights seemed shining through it from afar. These 
lights were the gilded summit of the Albert Memo- 
rial, and the still white marble of the geographical 
groups at its four corners. I never admired that 
work of art, but Nature, here as elsewhere, now 
and then casts a veil over the architect's blunder- 

89 



90 •' SOME ONE HAD BLUNDERED:* 

ing ; and with a pale morning sky behind and 
something of the dawn's rosiness between, the eye 
might rest with pleasure on the glimmering lights 
which but for the Memorial had not been there. 

One may almost measure the pleasantness of a 
walk by the unconsciousness with which we pass 
through time and distance. I can recall no distinct 
perception of things without or thoughts within till 
ten minutes or more later, when I was past the 
guard-house and upon the slanting path which leads 
without a break or bend to the corner of Oxford 
Street. On the right, in the open space towards 
the Reformers' Oak, several bodies of troops were 
skirmishing. An old soldier is tempted to give a 
technical description of the movements, which were 
open to criticism on several points, but that is not 
my purpose. Lucy (astat. twelve), who was with 
me, called out, ''Oh, uncle, look! the soldiers are 
kneeling down to fire, and then they run a little 
way and kneel and fire again. They are coming 
this way ! whatever shall we do ? " I explained 
the military expedient of seeking cover, and we 
awaited the onslaught protected by one of the 
hurdles put up to shelter new-sown grass. A few 
foot-passengers were on the pathway here and there, 
but with one or two exceptions they hurried out of 
the line of advance. Lucy caught hold of my arm 
as the pointed rifles, the smoke, and the rattle of 
successive discharges along the line made her feel, 



''SO ATE ONE HAD BLUNDERED:' 91 

she said, as if wc were really '• under fire." Then 
the men charged j^ast us and the hurdles ; the right 
of the line was thrown forward, so that the whole 
of the front rank did not cross the pathway at once. 
Those nearest us were on the grass again Avhen the 
order came to fire, but as we looked back I saw the 
half section that w^as in the act of crossing the 
gravel waver for at least three seconds, — long 
enough for a volley to strike the advancing mass ; 
the men hesitated whether to kneel where they w^ere 
and block the foot^vay, or to break their line and 
leave the passage clear. 

I told Lucy to run on to school by herself. It 
was only a trifle ; the men had never been on 
active service, and military manoeuvres in England 
are so much sacrificed to the civil interests con- 
cerned, that I think the troops were only doing as 
their leaders taught them in considering the con- 
venience of the chance passengers at hand rather 
than the regularity of their own formation. It 
wasn't the mere break in the line that sent a kind of 
shudder through me and made me fancy I felt my 
old wound ache ; it was the fatal hesitation, the 
out\vard and visible signs of the old lamentable fact 
that our troops are habitually sent forward to con- 
front risks and contingencies with which they have 
not been prepared to deal. I have a right to speak. 
Twice mv best hopes in life have been spoilt because 
the army in which I had enlisted was undisciplined, 



93 ''SOME ONE HAD BLUNDERED:' 

and — it would be a breach of discipline to say badly 
commanded — I mean not commanded enough — 
left without orders in a crisis when salvation could 
only be found in perfect wisdom above and perfect, 
proinpt obedience below. 

I have no country of my own, and as a citizen of 
the world I am pained alike by the reminders that 
meet me everywhere of the expanding torrent of 
mischances that pours upon the devoted head of 
those in whose fellowship " some one has blun- 
dered." It is a hard saying that in both war and 
politics it is impossible for a man to do his duty 
single-handed ; he may do all he can, but he can't 
do all that is set him unless his comrades help by 
doing their task too. One man cannot even be wise 
alone ; his wisdom fails if he does not make others 
see with him, or find and join with friends enough 
who see with him already. 

I was a boy of nineteen when Thomas Davis died 
in '45. My father died two years before ; he was a 
thorough Irishman, but he died suddenly and left 
no will. He was the second son of a rich contractor, 
w^ho had invested the fortune he made during the 
war in estates in England and Ireland. My uncle, 
the eldest son, who held the English property, was 
a stiff Conservative : he was my guardian, and 
having no sons of his own, his wish vs^as to make 
me English enough to be his heir. I had matricu- 
lated at Trinity a month before my father died, and 



''SOME ONE HAD BLUNDERED:' 93 

had a hard fight to be allowed to stay there. My 
guardian insisted on Oxford, or at least Cambridge, 
if I was bent on mathematics. I got my way 
on this point by invoking my father's w^sh, but in 
return, by what I thought a small revenge, my 
allowance was cut down to the minimum on which 
a man could live, so that all at once I was left 
powerless to help with funds the national mo\'e- 
ment of which my father had been a keen sup- 
porter, and to which he had allowed me, as a boy, 
to contribute as I pleased in my own name. 

Between shame and fury I told the story to Davis, 
raging at the English uncle, and complaining that I 
was helpless and useless to him now. I was half 
comforted, half humiliated, by the compassionate, 
tolerant smile with which he said, "I wish we had 
an honest man in earnest for every guinea you 
would have liked to give us ; " and then with frank 
courtesy he added, "You bring us one to begin 
with." Such words from 3^oung Ireland's chief 
made bo}^s and men loyal ; but Davis died before 
his time for leading came, and I, a disappointed 
man, turn faithless now and wonder whether, even 
if he had lived, he would have struck out a policy 
such as IrishiTien could have followed in union to 
success. 

While he lived we had hopes ; he was waiting 
his opportunity. Opportunity comes to those who 
know how to wait, and we felt certain that in due 



94 ''SOME ONE HAD BLUNDERED:' 

time he would bid us follow him to seize the oppor- 
tunity. We wxre young and eager, and hoped the 
call Avould be a call to arms. Vears afterwards it 
was with as much envy as good-w^ill that I watched 
Garibaldi's deliverance of the two Sicilies: young 
Ireland would have immortalized itself by death or 
victory if a campaign like that had been possible to 
us then. Davis was for neglecting no chance of 
peaceful constitutional agitation, but I doubt now 
w^hether he realized how narrowly w^e v\^ere hemmed 
in by alternative impossibilities. He thought we 
should have been ready to fight as a last resource, 
and held that O'Connell was feeble if not false when 
he failed to stand by his "Defiance." He did not 
see that men are only ready to fight a losing battle 
to the death when death or victory are their only 
chances. Ireland would have had a better chance 
if England had been more like Austria ; that is why 
so many Irishmen hate English good intentions 
more than anything else English. 

Davis welcomed every small concession. Ireland 
free and prosperous, he thought, had less to fear 
from bad government than Ireland prostrate and 
pauperized ; and yet, if there was ever to be an 
appeal to arms, would farmers with a fair lease turn 
out to fight while red-coats spoiled the homestead } 
When a nation takes to arms, it has been goaded by 
intolerable, ubiquitous oppression. I have but one 
thing to say in extenuation of the English dominion 



''SOME ONE HAD BLUNDERED." 95 

ill Ireland : it has never been so uniformly and 
systematicallv cruel as to open the gateway of de- 
liverance made by a nation's passionate despair. 
Some tyrann}' breeds heroes ; we were crushed by a 
yoke shameful to bear, inglorious to try and break. 
It did not seem so then, but I know now we could 
not have roused the country for a real war of insur- 
rection, and short of warfare we had no resource in 
reach but to follow Davis' counsel and continue 
lawful agitation. 

But this was accepting the Union. Had we 
among us any statesmen able to see and strong 
enough to make their following believe that to de- 
liver Ireland an Irish politician must first revenge 
her wrongs by conquering her conquerer and seiz- 
ing a front place in the Imperial Legislature ? We 
did not see things in that light ; we thought it was 
a fine appeal to moral force when, to save the lives 
of our docile mob, we stood with folded arms, pro- 
testing calmly while our lawful liberties were over- 
borne by force. 'Twas a schoolboy ish kind of pat- 
riotism ; Italian schoolboys were happier in dying 
— even though some died in vain — upon the field of 
battle ; and yet we were not to blame for our shabby 
fate. It was a part of the situation that political 
uprightness and daring by itself brought no crown 
of martyrdom, and who can believe in the magna- 
nimity of a rebel who runs no risks.? And then 
in desperation and defiance some courted such risks 



96 ''SOME ONE HAD BLUNDERED:* 

as they could find, and instead of a crown of mar- 
tyrdom In an Austrian fortress, found the disgrace 
that a lodging in clean English gaols reserves for 
rioters or incendiaries. Our roughest roughs would 
have made good patriots in less smooth and civilized 
days, but I doubt whether they were ripe for the 
enthusiasm on behalf of peaceful measures without 
which the wisest leader is but an idle voice crying 
in the wilderness. 

Anyway, the end was, that it all came to nothing, 
I wasn't the last to leave the sinking ship. I had 
trusted Davis more than any of the rest, and when 
he died I felt as if we were a crew without a captain. 
Loud counsels were plenty, but none of them seemed 
so wise and helpful that I, who felt a youth's long- 
ing to follow some one with enthusiasm, could give 
myself up to follovs^ing any one of them. I had 
some thoughts of shooting Peel and blowing my 
own brains out afterwards, but even that expedient 
seemed a doubtful promise. What I did was to 
write and ask my guardian if he would buy me a 

commission in the th, which was just ordered 

on foreign sei*vice. My uncle gave a delighted con- 
sent ; some one had told him of the verses of mine 
Duffy was good-natured enough to print in the A^a- 
tion^ and he was overjoyed at the thought, of getting 
me out of the country in some other character than 
that of a convict. 

From that day to this I have never revealed the 



'^SOME ONE HAD BLUNDERED:* 97 

secret thought that urged what my friends thought 
ahiiost disloyal desertion. I saw our cause was 
ho^Deless then. When we asked ourselves if Peel 
could be induced to make this or that concession, 
the answer again and again would be, "Whatever 
Peel might say, the Duke would be dead against 
it." But Arthur, Duke of Wellington, was an 
Irishman. I thought, "Let a loyal Irishman win 
another W^aterloo, and instead of a dukedom ask for 
his wages leave to carry three Irish Bills." With 
the ardor of a disappointed lover I threw myself 
upon the study of fortification and tactics, and as I 
read at the antipodes of one fiiilure after another, 
and then of my country's misery, famine and pesti- 
lence added to every other woe, I still held to the 
wild ambition of earning in the English army the 
power and the right to serve and save Ould Ireland. 
It was a boyish dream, and as years went by, I 
thought, no doubt, less and less of that distant end, 
and grew more and more absorbed in the interests 
of my profession. When we were ordered to the 
Crimea, I thought more of the pleasure of engaging 
in real, scientific warfare, of the chance of making a 
known name for myself, than of the chance, years 
afterwards of being " sent for to the Queen." Our 
regiment was the first to land, and thenceforward 
the army was my nation. 

In Ireland I had had to watch the ruin of a cause 
without knowing what to do to save it. It was 



90 '^ SOME ONE HAD BLUNDERED:' 

worse now. I knew, at least in part, what needed 
to be done, but I was powerless even to do all my 
own duty well, since to do it all would have in- 
volved doing also that of two or three adjoining 
functionaries whose bungling blocked my way. 
What came to be known as the breakdown of the 
commissariat was but a sample of the official incom- 
petence which permeates the whole national admm- 
istration. Clever officials would have pacified Ire- 
land as a mere matter of routine. The English 
Constitution had need be good and the English 
people docile, since the one has to be administered 
and the other governed by an amalgam of clerks 
and amateurs. Irresponsibility and impotence for 
good, turn our permanent officials into clerks, while 
party politicians come into office untrained in any- 
thing but Parliamentary debate. When adminis- 
tration was half as difficult and complicated as it is 
now, paternal statesmen educated their sons for 
public life and acted towards them as if the art of 
ruling could be taught. Now a young man is tossed 
to sink or swim in an election, and not one in ten 
is able to forget the electioneering tone when he is 
landed in the House, to realize that members are 
not constituents, and that there is no connection at 
all between the practical importance of measures 
and their estimated influence on a personal reputa- 
tion. I for one believe that a trained and able 
politician would be followed for his measures' sake, 



'^ SOME ONE HAD BLUNDEREDr 99 

if they were good, without having to labor straight- 
way to conciliate the sweet voices of his colleagues ; 
but lawful modesty bids men without training or 
experience take a deprecatory tone, and so there is 
and end of government. 

I am digressing, but it is more seemly for a sol- 
dier to rail at statesmen than at his own commanders, 
and I have seen since then at work in peace all the 
causes of our needless discomfiture in those days of 
war. I am not going to rake up the stories of old 
blundering. I wasn't reckoned with the croakers 
then, and onl}' risked a little chaff now and again 
by hinting at safe rules for doing what our gallant 
young officers liked to leave to the moment's inspi- 
ration. 

On a spring evening in 1855, a party of us had 
been entertaining some yachtsmen at dinner, and 
after they left us, we still stayed smoking in the 
moonlight to enjoy the summer-like coolness. Col- 
onel and an officer of the staff were present, 

and somehow we drifted into an argument. Per- 
haps I took more trouble to say all I meant, in hopes 
that some of it would, if I convinced my men, 
reach headquarters at second-hand. 

I argued that nothing ought to be uncertain in 
war ; that a general ought to be able to calculate 
by instinct what each movement would cost him 
in lives, and to risk no step that hadn't a clear pur- 
pose, which could be served no cheaper way. I 



1 oo - 5 OME ONE HA D BL UNDER ED. " 

said ignorance m such a matter was criminal ; it 
was murder for a man to march his troops at random 
under fire ; every life lost in vain, ay, and every 
needless wound inflicted, ovight to be felt, as it was, 
a blot of ignominy on the I Leader's fame. 

O'Callaghan, who had exchanged from a regiment 
at the Cape, in order, as ho said, not to miss the fun, 
said I wanted to bring in a mean commercial spirit 
of economy — a man who was good for anything 
didn't count his own risks like that. How could a 
general who counted them have any dash or bold- 
ness.? I threw down my cigar in fierce disgust. 
If generals were asses, that was no reason why we 
should say it was a general's whole duty to bray 
aloud. What right has a man to the glory of com- 
manding English troops, if he hasn't the wit to be 
brave for himself, and at the same time cautious not 
to waste their bravery ? Then I told a story of the 
only sole command I had ever held. It was in 
South Africa, and we took a Kafir kraal with the 
loss of just ten men killed and wounded. I asked 
O'Callaghan how he would feel if, after calculating 
how to bring his men up so as to have them under 
fire for the shortest time, he caught himself at once 
in some dull blunder w^hich doubled their exposure } 
I knew all about the family history of the four men 
killed that day. If one of them had been killed by 
my default, should not I have felt myself a murderer 
disgraced.? Any of us can see and feel this in a 



''SOME ONE HAD BLUNDERED:' lOl 

small affair ; does it alter the inherent responsibility 
of office that its holder is too dull even to know 
what are the consequences of his own neglect ? 

I dared not mention instances of whole companies 
that had been sacrificed — halted without cover 
under fire, merely because their leader didn't quite 
know^ what to do with them next. Even a general 
complaint seemed too like an accusation against 
familiar names, and with a feeling that I had gone 
too far, and to turn the subject, I expressed a wish 
that the military colleges would do a little more to 
familiarize their students with the kind of calcula- 
tion they have to make in practice. In Africa, I 
used to get my men to practise charging on the 
level, up and down hill, and over broken ground, 
so that I could tell w^ithin three seconds how^ long 
they would be covering a strange reach of ground. 
Why should not our cadets be practised in judging 
pace and distance by the eye ? 

The Major, who loves sport as much as he hates 
science, took up his parable here, and narrated 
wondrous feats of sight and judgment by Scotch 
keepers and Canadian trappers, tales which seemed 
to carry so plain a moral that I didn't think it 
needed saying, " If these men can do so much for a 
livelihood and sport, we should not reckon less to 
make a soldier's duty." But as we turned In, 
O'Cailaghan put his hand on my shoulder by way 



I02 " SOME ONE HAD BLUNDERED:* 

of encouragement or consolation, while he laughed, 
" Old boy ! so the Major shut you up for once ! " 

The next day we had a little brush with the 
enemy. It was not one of the famous battles, and 
I will give no clue for identifying the affair. Let it 
suffice to say that my company was stationed under 
cover in reserve, while our guns tried to silence a 
small battery the Russians had opened during the 
night. I v^^as glad of the job, for I knew we should 
cany the batteiy easily, and a little triumph like 
that does wonders for the troops' health and spirits ; 
but my satisfaction was cut short. The French were 
making a demonstration on the other side, and a 
regiment had just passed behind the battery, but 
within musket range of it, on the way to reinforce 
the Russian advanced posts. I noticed that the fire 
of our guns began to slacken, and looking from them 
to the enemy, I saw another regiment following on 
the same line. They should have doubled their fire, 
lengthening the range now and then, so as to drop a 
shot into the thick green mass. Instead, the slack- 
ening fire was interpreted by the order brought me 
to charge the guns. I asked for nothing better than 

to charge the guns ; but was it possible did 

not see that just before we reached the battery the 
advancing regiment would be within range ; five 
minutes later it would have passed.'' We were still 

concealed ; but could imagine that if we 

showed ourselves the Russians would be even 



^'SOME ONE HAD BLUNDERED:' 103 

greater fools than we were and fail to greet us with 
a volley in flank ? 

I had no choice but to obey without delay ; even 
if I had had courage enough to seem slow to act on 
the order to advance, my dela}' would only have 
caused a choice of evils, for the Russian battery 
re-opened fire the moment our guns stopped to leave 
the field for infantry to charge. I would do all I 
could to spare my men, but when it came to a ques- 
tion between them and others, they and I were one, 
and we claimed the post of honor. When the 
order reached me, I stopped no longer than it takes 
for the eye to turn once to right and left ; there 
was no help for it ; I was blameless in the matter ; 
and casting all care behind, I gave myself up to the 
delight of martial passion. 

It did not last long — what keen pleasure ever 
does ? — but while it lasted I was glad ; the pride of 
life was in my veins. I am inclined to question 
whether those who have never led a forlorn hope, 
know what glorious gladness is : one has left life 
behind ; all life's triumphs are summed up in the 
feeling that one rushes gladly to encounter death ; 
all the fierce selfishness of animal passion, which 
we quell as may be in the days of peace, finds an 
outlet here, and feeds our delight in the tumult and 
savageness of war ; and yet we do well to rejoice in 
our rage, for we charge at the call of duty, and pay 
with our life-blood for the moment's glory. 



I04 '^ SOME ONE HAD BLUNDERED:' 

We had to charge first over broken ground and 
then in a slant uphill ; the danger from the flank 
fire came in the last part of the advance. I gave 
the w^ord for a rapid double, and as the pace was 
uniform uphill, the square, formed by our double 
line grew^ into a blunt diamond ; I led the way at 
the foremost corner, keeping my eye upon the near- 
ing battery. I had nothing to do with the green- 
coated mass upon the left ; it was nothing to me 
whether they knew their business or no ; my business 
was to reach the guns alive, if they and destiny 
would let me. I looked back and was pleased ; 
notwithstanding the pace, our lines were almost 
even. There was a white fan-shaped patch of 
cirrhus vapor on the clear blue sky that met my 
eye in front ; perhaps I should not have known that 
I saw it but for what happened next. A sound like a 
thunderclap struck me in the face. I felt blind and 
shaken ; I remember no other feeling. 

It was three in the afternoon when we charged ; 
the sun had set, but its redness had not quite left 
the sky when I woke to consciousness. I felt no 
pain, only a giddy faintness, till I tried to move, 
when an unearthly pain went through my side, 
followed by a soothing sense of warmth, and then 
blessed unconsciousness. When I woke again the 
moon was running wildly through thin clouds ; 
heaped-up fleecy masses swept along, but it was not 
like the sky I knew ; it is one thing to walk erect 



''SOME ONE HAD BLUNDERED." 105 

and give the stars their names : as I lay prostrate 
on the ground, with burning lips and a pain I dared 
not examine lest worse came of it, thus lying, with 
nothing sane but sight about me, it seemed as if I 
did not see the human sky : figures and shades were 
there ; it melted into a dim travesty of the Sistine 
Chapel ceiling. Adam's face looked out threaten- 
ingly ; a singing in my ears seemed to say, " Fallen, 
fallen, fallen ;" and as in broken dreams one catches 
one's self saying half a sentence that has no meaning, 
my brain took up the cry unthinkingly, and I found 
myself repeating, as if it wxre a thought, " To fall is 
a blunder," " Falling, falling down ;" and answering 
to the words was a sea-sick feeling of sinking, sink- 
ing through the earth, w^hile overhead the moon and 
clouds whirled round, now seeming to be part of me, 
mingling with the kaleidoscopic colors my blood- 
less eyes saw in vacancy, and then again vanishing 
in distance as night fell upon the nen'eless limbs. 
Weapons have changed since Homer, but dying is 
much the same as in the " Iliad." 

Again I woke : it was dark ; my limbs were stiff 
and chill ; I felt as if floating alone in the darkness ; 
the hard ground touched me like a blow, but the 
darkness above and below seemed equally near, 
equally far. There was something maddening in 
the sense of a possessing pain when every other 
perception was stunned or blinded. I saw and 
heard and felt nothing without, only wuthin an 



lo6 '• SOME ONE HAD BLUNDERED:' 

agony of pain and terror. I was trying again to 
argue as I had the night before, but in the deHrium 
of the wound fever I was haunted by a thought that, 
if I could only find the mathematical formula for 
the two rates of advance, and find it quickly, I 
should save the lives of Hincks and Bendall. 
Heaven only knows what put the names of these 
poor fellows (who got off scatheless, by the way) 
into my wandering brain ; but all through that 
night, and through weeks of fever afterwards, my 
ravings were all meant to explain how, if we could 
only measure the angle AEI, our men would be as 
safe as billiard-balls. 

The night was haunted with uglier spectres than 
these. I would advise those who risk an intimacy 
with cold lead to keep their conscience clean. 
Nightmares of pain, and fright, and horror are 
bad enough ; madness itself would be a pleasant 
refuge from the awful terror when ill deeds rise up 
like swelling phantoms, filling, filling the whole of 
space, and drawing closer, nearer, till their threat- 
ening touch dissolves into a thrill of pain, and we 
awake from black unearthly visions into the more 
bearable consciousness of " real night," and a human 
body impaled upon a scrap of lead. An optical 
delusion which no doctor has ever yet explained to 
me added to the horrid terror of these hours. In 
the moonlit twilight I saw the hillside above me, 
and the surface of the ground, every tuft of grass, 



^\SOME ONE HAD BLUNDERED." 1 07 

each loose stone, the scattered cartridges, and the 
distorted figure of a fallen soldier — everything in 
sight rose from the ground ; it seemed to stand up 
in relief a foot or eighteen inches from the real 
solid earth. I dared not open my eyes for fear of 
the ghostly mirage. I dashed my arm out in frantic 
endeavor to dispel the vision by a touch, and fainted 
again w^ith the exertion and pain. 

The wounded w^ould have been cared for sooner 
but for the ill success which rewarded our ill-timed 
attack. The volley which knocked me down put 
an end to the work of many better fellows ; the 
rest kept on gallantly and reached the battery, only 
to find themselves met hand-to-hand with equal 
numbers from the infantry resei've. Our loss was 
heavy. O'Callaghan fought like a hero, and with a 
broken arm led oft^ the sui"\'ivors, w^ho retreated, 
firing so steadily that little further harm was done 
them. But the battery remained with the enemy 
(for that night only) ; and so it was not till the 
moon had set that surgeons were allowed to go for- 
ward with a party to bring in the wounded. I w^as 
unconscious when they came, and, with few inter- 
vals, for some weeks afterwards. It was in one of 
the intei*\^als I heard the surgeons say, in language 
which, unluckily, I was anatomist enough to under- 
stand, that my wound was one to make active ser- 
vice impossible for life. I think the discovery let 



lo8 ''-SOME ONE HAD BLUNDERED:* 

me in for aiiother turn of fever ; but that's neither 
here nor there. 

After two or three months I was ordered home. 

General and the staff officer who had been 

with us on the evening before our mishap came to 
see me before I left. The latter must have men- 
tioned my tirade, for General observed benig- 

nantly that he was always glad to hear studious 
young officers reported for gallant conduct ; books 
were all very well, but (this to me) " Real service 
is a very different thing, as no doubt you have dis- 
covered." I felt guilty of a breach of discipline as 
I replied gravely, " Very different. General." 

Of course my career was at an end : it was years 
before I was able to walk, and the least exertion 
would displace the imperfectly united fracture. I 
spent some years in Italy, and saw Garibaldi enter 
Naples, but no new ambition came to take the place 
of those that had been balked. Few men are able, 
when their life is spoilt, to gather up the fragments 
and make a fresh start : I vs^asn't one of the few. 
My uncle wanted me to go into Parliament, but I 
didn't care to be there unless as a power, and I had 
neither health nor energy to set myself to obtain 
influence in other ways than the one which took my 
boyish fancy. I did not even live in Ireland. I got 
an honest man to look after the estates, and so long 
as they were not mismanaged I felt all was done 
for them that I could do. I was unfit for the count- 



'^SOME ONE HAD BLUNDERED." 109 

less labors of an 'improving landlord;" it was 
better to attempt nothing than to attempt and fail, 
and I felt it was too difficult, unless I could have 
put all my heart and strength in it. I didn't care 
enough about small local amendments to be able to 
do that ; it was Ireland I wanted to benefit, not my 
own estate ; and though the latter was a fractional 
part of Ireland, I refused to own any obligation to 
sink myself in the lesser task when fate had so 
maliciously cut me off from the pleasant cherishing 
of wider hopes. 

Now that it is quite too late for any reflections to 
clamor about being put in practice, I am willing to 
admit that part of the judgment that falls on nations 
and men for blundering is, that the blunder which 
makes a neighbor's task more difficult acts too fre- 
quently on his mind as an excuse. Who knows, 
after all, whether I was a heaven-born general ? It 
strikes me, if I had been, failing an army, I should 
have made myself some other following. Failing a 
war commissariat to organize, I should have devel- 
oped supply and demand for new industries in 
Clare. I take my share of responsibility for my 
own omissions ; but, after all, the leaders, whose 
blunders threw me out of work, took the initiative 
in leading me into the temptation through which 
I fell. " Blundering is falling, falling down." If I 
had been quite sane during that night upon the 
field, I might have said, " The man who falls into a 



no ''SOME ONE HAD BLUNDERED." 

blunder pulls his neighbor down, and every fresh 
fall is a weight dragging on the steps of those who 
walk erect, and crushing the fallen into further 
depths." 

For God's sake, let men make a conscience of not 
blundering at their work — especially at the work 
of ruling men and handling troops ! 



likiimm^r llnmu 



•* Why, just 
Unable to fly, one swims ! "—Browning. 



IV. 



I KNOW a man who has been laughed at, off and 
on, these thirty years, for the one act of his life 
that he has never regretted. If you want a true 
story, I can tell you his. 

Thirty 3'ears ago Nice was less like Paris than 
now, but ^^y fetes were held at a certain villa, and 
\x\y hero had been at one of them. Something in 
Ariadne's eyes emboldened him to spend the night 
in trespassing in villa gardens whence he could get 
a glimpse of the window he thought was hers ; and 
by the time the sun had risen, his courage had risen 
too, to the level of pen, ink and paper. It wasn't 
easy to see the eldest daughter of a large family 
alone, and he had a not unnatural dread of having 
his romance spoilt by some prosaic interruption, or 
turned into an undying jest by the mischief of an 
enfant tei'rzble. In a letter at least no sentence 
risked being cut short in an unfinished caress. So 
he wrote, but waited self-denyingly till nine o'clock 
to send his messenger with the note, lest Ariadne 
should still be sleeping after that intoxicating waltz. 

The messenger was long returning. A whole long 

"3 



114 MIDSUMMER NOON. 

hour, and minutes over. Arnold did not know that 
a mortal hour could be so long. Would she be angry 
with his presumption ? He could not help writing 
some of the passionate love he felt ; if — oh, terror ! 

— if she did not care for him, would she not resent, 
would she not have a right to resent, his daring to 
love her so passionately without her leave? But 
then, too, surely, she was not one to give her love 
unasked ; he must win her by patient, passionate 
iove and pleading. How should she care for him ? 
what was there in him for her to care for except 
his love? had he let his love plead urgently enough, 
with all the eloquence of his despairing longing? 
Had he said too little — not enough to let her see 
what a desert his life must be if she could not give 
a gracious hearing to his suit? Had he said too 
much ? Though life would be desolate without her, 
God forbid that her life should be spoilt out of her 
pure compassion — she should choose freely — he 
shrank with horror from the tyranny of threatening : 
love me or I cannot live ; but his thought in writing 
had been : darling, love me ; how can I live, darling, 
without your love ! and yet for her sake he could 
not wish to be loved for j^ity. The wretched letter 

— he loved her so well ; but how was she to guess 
it when he had said nothing that he wished, when 
what he had said was all wrong and foolish, and 
seemed now to mean everything that was furthest 
from his loving thoughts? 



MIDSUMMER NOON. 1 15 

But then, again, she was so sweet and gentle, 
every word and deed found charitable interpreta- 
tion in her open heart. Surely she would under- 
stand and not think ill of one w^ho loved her — she 
who understood people so easily would surely un- 
derstand how much. But then, why had she sent 
no word of answer.? She must know how he was 
waiting for his fate. Was it possible that she 
would not write? would she meet him without 
writing? would she neither write nor meet him? 
He watched the minute hand go round ; his hopes 
died sixty deaths — there was no answer stilL How 
long must he wait? if he started for Villa Franca 
and her answer come after he was gone? if he 
started too late, waiting for a message, and she was 
gone to meet him and he was not there? What 
cruelty might not be expected from fate, when even 
she was cruel and had not vouchsafed one word to 
comfort his despair? 

He was leaning his head upon his hands in such 
deep despair, that Luigi, with a note, had knocked 
twice — it was a quarter past ten — before Arnold 
started up to bid him enter. He had a long story 
to tell : they had sent him from the villa to the 
yacht — (she wrote in haste, and the soft pencil lines 
were blurred — he saw nothing but " Your loving" 
at the bottom) ; — the yacht was anchored out at 
sea, the young ladies were being rowed out to it in 
a boat — (was he dreaming, or did this line read 



Il6 MIDSUMMER NOON, 

" Yes, yes, yes " ?) Giuseppe said the yacht would 
sail long before a rowboat from the shore could 
reach her, that the English milord would be back 
to-day or to-morrow, and my business might wait 
so long — (Arnold had neither heard nor read ; he 
could not read her secret words with his chattering 
rascal's eye upon him ; he must hear the story and 
let him go) — "And then La Gimella heard and 
said — my sister's son is going to marry his daughter, 
and they are all clever boatmen — he was to take 
fish and poultry to the yacht before she started, and 
he offered to do my business for me. But I am 
most discreet, Signor " — (confound you !) — " and 
said that I had something of importance to deliver 
to the cook^ who is my cousin's brother-in-law ; and 
then La Gimella took me in his boat, and I gave the 
Signorina the letter as I passed her ; and then quite 
openly, when she read it, she called me to her, and 
gave me thanks, and the sails were set and the 
Gimella shouted for me to follow to the boat ; but 
the gracious and noble young lady wrote in pencil 
hastily, and bade me give this to my master and 
say they would be on shore again at night, but she 
could not say the hour." 

Arnold swore one or two grateful oaths and bade 
the messenger begone. He threw himself again 
upon the scrap of paper and read: — " Dearest, I 
have no time to think how to say yes, yes, yes ; the 
yacht is ready to sail — if I could answer your letter 



MID S UMMER NO ON. 117 

as it desen-es ! As we pass Villa Franca, how I 
shall long to be with you there ! No more. Addio I 
I am called. Your loving — Ariadne." 

Nothing seems so incredible as the supreme hap- 
piness one has hardly dared to hope for, because 
one hopes with such a desperate longing. Arnold 
felt as if it were all too ^ood to be true, till he 
realized that twelve hours or even more might pass 
before he .could see her — say all he had not said, 
and learn with his own ears to believe that his dar- 
ling would be gracious. So tremble between joy 
and pain the souls in purgatory when the message 
comes for them to enter paradise to-morrow. Who 
can count the hours of the day that stand between 
us and heaven ? 

One thing at least he might do ; and hasting as 
if time were short, still in his rough undress, he 
repaired to the jeweller's shop, kept by a well- 
known Roman exile. I will not describe the ring 
he brought away with him, for his wife wears it 
always to this day, and I have never seen another 
like it ; every one may think of the ring with which 
he would choose to celebrate his golden wedding : 
the ring itself had a chameleon-like mutability, and 
few who have seen it describe it the same way. 
Arnold had prayed her to bring the children towards 
Villa Franca in their walk, and then, when he met 
them, to turn away into the olive gardens, while 
the little ones gathered narcissus and anemones. 



Ii8 MIDSUMMER NOON. 

He felt as if he must keep tryst with his hopes and 
wear out the hours there. 

Had her spirit been there before him ? the world 
never wore such a face before. He walked on air ; 
it seemed as if the world's brilliancy streamed in 
through every sense ; not his eyes alone, but every 
eager limb felt a vision of the glory that lit up the 
bright young world. Was this Italy or Hellas, or 
the very garden of the gods? Truly, he said, she 
is a daughter of the gods, and I by her love have 
left the cold world behind. He had not slept : day 
had dawned upon chill anxiety ; now, as he stretched 
his limbs out in the generous sunlight, he smiled 
aloud and reproached the school-books for never 
having told him that the waters of Lethe were so 
warm. He bathed in the warm air and marvelled, 
as every care fell from him ; what had happened to 
the glossy carouba tree by the wayside to make it 
look to him like the glorified spirit of a tree under 
which gods might rest? Something of a leaden, 
earthy load was gone from his spirit and the joyous 
nature round ; the shadows of the dark foliage had 
a green radiance which the dazzling sky could not 
extinguish. 

Was the sky overhead blue or white ? A bend 
in the road let the sea come near, and the water was 
a deep, dazzling blue, but all the sky was ablaze 
with sunlight. He thought, " When the islands of 
the blest want a constitution and a drapeau^ I will 



MIDSUMMER NOON. 1 19 

be their king and choose this tricolor — the blue, 
white, and green of the heaven-bright South, where 
the sea is as pure as the sky, the sky invisible like 
the far-darting Sun-god, and the brown earth veiled 
in a flickering mantle of silvery and purple green." 
Arnold's swinging walk came to a sudden pause ; 
just off the roadway footprints led up a little knoll 
where a white goat was grazing. He threw him- 
self upon the warm ground, dizzy with the over- 
whelming sense of rapture. She was trying to read 
Petrarch yesterday ; was it only yesterday he had 
translated for her : — 

The sea, hath not so many creatures 'mid its waves, 

Nor there above the orbit of the moon 

Did ever night behold as many stars : 

The coppice harbors not as many birds, 

Nor field bore ever grasses manifold, 

As are the thoughts that crowd my heart — my love I 

And he had read this yesterday, when he knew not 
what it meant. Yesterday's fulness was a barren 
hunger, its wisdom unfeeling ignorance ; only to- 
day he knew and was overwhelmed with the mar- 
vels of his knowledge. " O Ariadne ! Ariadne ! " 
he murmured half aloud : " Petrarch wrote of what 
he little knew ; better men than I have thought 
they loved, but believe me, darling, none ever loved 
as I do ; for you, my sweet, were then unborn, and 
who could be beloved as you are ? " A lark rose, 



I20 MIDSUMMER NOON, 

and he watched it circling into the sunlit blue. 
" y^<^go augeletto che cantando vai^ tell me," he 
said, " is it not true that every song and sigh of birds 
and lovers until now has been but a prophecy and 
archetype of the love that waits on Ariadne ! " The 
bird made no answer save with the trills that 
vanished into space, and the soft silence came to 
Arnold like assent, and he hid his face with love 
and shame. " O Ariadne ! Ariadne ! what have I 
done to be crowned with happiness above that of 
all the worthy lovers of old time ? " 

Something like a tear stood in his eye. There 
is no brighter light beneath the heavens than the 
twinkling flashes with which sea and sun hold con- 
verse ; but the surpassing brilliancy of that bright- 
ness is known only to the few who have felt it 
flash upon their souls through a love-born tear. 
Arnold was looking out to sea, and he smiled like 
a happy child at the forgiving brightness. And 
again his senses rested upon the melting harmony 
of gray and green ; the downy olive shimmered in 
the sunlight, and its silver glitter made the calm 
gray stone pines show green ; while close by, the 
wild myrtle and trailing caper and the overhanging 
carouba with its bursting pods bore witness that 
flower and seed time had their turn in Arcady. 

Arnold was half ashamed of the vehemence of 
his passion. He walked on more soberly, and re- 
flected with pleasure that he had the other day 



MIDSUMMER NOON. 131 

'defended Petrarch from the charge of exaggeration 
and unreality ; people had laughed at him, taking 
for irony the grave earnestness with which he said 
Laura's lover was the most literally truthful of im- 
mortal poets. He thought the discovery was cred- 
itable to his intelligence in that former state of 
existence to which it seemed to belong, and in 
virtue of it he would try to import into his new life 
the charitable hope and difficult belief in a propor- 
tion sum ; all and everything that his own Ariadne 
was to him he would hope and try to think fair 
ladies heretofore had been to the few faithful lovers 
who had worshipped their loves as he would. 

But at all events there was no one in the world 
like her to-day. Was she thinking of him and 
pitying his weary exile? The world was fair be- 
cause she graced it ; he felt as if her absence were 
putting out the light and glory. He wandered 
along the solitary promontory. Under the olive 
trees a reflection of the heavenly tricolor smiled at 
him. Starry blue anqmones and white narcissus 
mingled with the scanty grass : his fancy gathered 
the whole enclosure into one vast bouquet, and he 
sighed because he could not kneel to give it into 
her hands. Then the path led through orange trees 
under which no wild flowers grew, and then it came 
out upon something like an open heath ; the ground 
was bare, but sea flowers grew here and there 
among the stones. The sun poured down ; he felt 



123 MIDSUMMER NOON, 

the rays fall like dry, welcome rain. It was the 
year's shortest day, and he thought, " My life's 
winter is past and gone, and spring was gone be- 
fore it, and our love can know no autumn of decay ; 
there stretch before us long years of midsummer 
delight." 

The beryl-colored ripples of the tideless sea were 
washing the little sandy inlet below him. He said 
to himself, " I wonder from how far out ships see 
the lighthouse." He tried to keep from himself 
like a secret the irrepressible thought, " From the 
point Ferrat I shall see the yacht." The sun 
shone upon her sails and the light wind bore her 
smoothly over the twinkling blue. He was ready to 
upbraid Ariadne for letting the sun shine when he 
was not there to see it ; it seemed as if all the light 
he saw was a long way off. The yacht's head was 
turned out to sea. Unreasonable as it was, he felt a 
chill of disappointment. He was a monster of un- 
reasonableness. Of course she could not help it ; 
he must endure his fate like a man. It was hard, 
but he would endure it manfully, and he tried to fit 
to music Hawes' couplet — 

For though the daye be never so long, 
At last the belle ringeth to evensong. 

Let it be midsummer all the year round ; but as 
men pray against an imagined danger, he was ready 
to pray it might not be always noon. 



MIDSUMMER NOON. 123 

He thought of himself as a state prisoner, with a 
long term of solitary confinement to ser\'e out. 
Clearly the only escape from madness and despair 
was to begin seriously with some earnest thought. 
He began to think of Ariadne, and as he thought, 
wild waves of longing drowned his soul again. He 
stretched out his arms, and she was not there ; the 
flood of longing left him stranded on the bare, stony 
ground. He felt like a fish stranded by the tide 
upon a barren shore ; the parched earth was bare 
and desolate ; of what use was he or it.'' " I wish," 
he murmured, " Ariadne, I wish there were nothing 
in the world but thy deamess, and whatsoever may 
be dear to thee, and my soul gasping thirstily 
towards the infinite ocean of thy dearness, where 
its gaspings drown themselves, and there is nothing 
left but thee I " But there was his love left still, and 
it stretched out covetous arms after the departing 
yacht. The fish he felt like was that strange vessel 
landed by the fisherman in the " Arabian Nights." 
When the seal of the lid was taken ofi', the im- 
prisoned Djinn rose up like smoke ; he stretched 
himself out, tall, and with expanding arms, like the 
thoughts with which Arnold now swooped down 
upon the yacht, where Ariadne stood by her father 
on the bridge. 

As the yacht weighed anchor, Ariadne had taken 
refuge in the cabin to read at leisure the letter of 
which she had hardly been able to grasp the words 



J 24 MIDSUMMER NOON. 

in her haste to send an answer before it was too 
late. The yacht had made some way before she 
appeared on deck again. The boys laughed at her 
silence. Lord Moidart was deep in maps and con- 
sultation with the skipper. Presently he came aft, 
and asked Ariadne cheerfully if she and the chil- 
dren would like to stay out for a week's cruise and 
run on to Corsica ; the weather was fair, and if they 
signalled a home-bound boat, the mother would 
know where they were and not be anxious. Poor 
Ariadne ! She had been planning how, in the 
course of a long hour's quiet talk with her father, 
she would gradually prepare him for the momen- 
tous news (which, by the way, was no news at all, 
either to Arnold's mother or Lord Moidart, who 
had watched complacently the innocent course of 
their children's first romance) , and now she could 
only feel foolishly unable to say a word, unless her 
blank looks spoke. Lord Moidart was still young, 
and in his diplomatic career he had had to read 
harder riddles than Ariadne's transparent face. 
He made confession easy to her : how would she 
like the cruise if they picked up Arnold first .^ The 
yacht was put about, and Ariadne whispered, she 
never quite knew why, " Papa, wx had better land 
at Villa Franca first." 

Arnold could not bear the sight of the receding 
yacht ; it was his first trouble, and he set himself 
to bear it like a man. He turned away from the 



MIDSUMMER NOON. 1 25 

dazzling south, and resting his head in the shade of 
a stunted wild laurel bush, he looked west^vard, 
past the castle and old town of Nizza. to the low 
line of the Antibes ; he looked past all these to his 
English home, where the sun never shone as now, 
but where Ariadne — was it possible? — Ariadne 
would one day walk by his side. Do what he 
would, his thoughts still circled round. He could 
not dwell on thoughts of her without the upspring- 
ing of a w^ild desire ; then he set himself to desire 
nothing she could not grant, and, however soberly 
his thoughts began again, ere long they ended with 
outstretched arms and a wailing cry within. He 
could bear it no longer, and started up to see the 
yacht once more, even if it were only as a distant 
speck, bearing his love away. He looked ; was it 
a too happy dream .^^ The yacht was nearer, the 
sun glancing on her sails ; she was making for the 
harbor. Could it mean — he dared not guess — 
what could it mean .^ No ! she was anchoring far 
out, the wind was against her entering the harbor 
— ^vas anything amiss? They were lowering a 
boat. Arnold stood with every limb intent, like 
Mercury waiting Jove's word to fly ; he watched 
with straining eyes. What sailor could wear white 
and blue? Ariadne, by heaven! Ariadne is in 
the boat, and it comes to fetch her lover ! 

Do not think my hero mad. He paused to think 
about his dress ; a white flannel shirt is none the 



126 MIDSUMMER NOON. 

worse for water, and the sun and sea only made his 
yellow hair curl tighter ; he did not wish to reach 
her looking like a gray drowned rat, but somehow 
it never crossed his mind as possible that he should 
wait on shore till the boat came nearer. He pro- 
ceeded very orderly to take off his coat and boots ; 
he folded her letter and put it in his tin fusee case ; 
he slipped the ring on his little finger, and, after 
dipping his head in the sea, he stuck a sprig of 
flowering myrtle behind his ear. He waded among 
pink flowering rocks, and the delicate medusae 
swam round him unabashed ; then, as the water 
deepened, he struck out to sea. 

The world was bright again ; but a new change 
had come upon his spirit. His love and longing 
had been too boisterous, his joy had hovered upon 
the brink of sudden death. As he rested on the 
cool blue water, and rose and fell with the soothing 
motion of the gentle swell, he felt at one with the 
world which ^vas all one path towards her. What 
were time and distance to make his love grow faint, 
though she was far off', beyond the end of the infi- 
nite ladder of light that glittered dazzlingly between 
him and the horizon — were not his arms and his 
courage strong? and with a slow, steady, effortless 
stroke, he felt himself borne along towards the goal. 
He was swimming southward, sunward. On either 
hand, if he could have seen it, the sea was of the 
deepest blue ; but his path lay along the broad, 



MIDSUMMER NOON. 127 

bright stream, like a transparent silver sunbeam, 
which reached on to behind the sun in heaven. 
The sun's rays w^ere strong upon his head ; as he 
rose over the crest of a little w^ave, its foam splashed 
refreshingly in his face ; the rippling of the w^ater, 
the warmth overhead, and the still, even motion of 
his limbs brought a kind of drowsiness with it. 
The journey seemed long though the way was 
pleasant, and Ariadne herself would meet him at 
the end ; it was with a sobered joy that he thought 
of what seemed the far-oft' meeting. But with the 
drowsiness his strokes were slackening, and he 
woke again to more strenuous pursuit. He thought, 
" My best goodwill take a life's pursuit; Ariadne 
will scorn an idle lover ; " and he swam faster ; he 
knew he was swimming fast and well, and he 
thought joyously of the nearing boat. 

He heard the splash of the oars, and the sailors 
humming in chorus " Lou Rossignou che vola." 
He listened in vain for Ariadne's voice ; he saw 
the boat fast drawing nearer, and she was leaning 
forward in the bow. He smiled and did not speak ; 
but as they drew quite near, he paused in his stroke, 
and leaning, as it were, with his elbows on the 
buoyant water, he took the ring and the sprig of 
myrtle in his hand, and, as the boat came close, 
he touched the prow and Ariadne's hand ; the ring 
was on her finger and the sprig of myrtle in her 
hand before any one else quite saw what passed. 



138 MIDSUMMElt NOON, 

Then, laughing, he cHmbed into the boat ; he said 
it was glorious weather for a swim ; he talked fast 
and to every one but her. 

Just before they reached the yacht. Lord Moidart 
patted him on the back with a good-humored laugh, 
the like of which he has often had to encounter 
since, and pointed out that if he had stayed on shore 
in his clothes, the boat would have picked him up 
in little more than another ten or fifteen minutes. 

" But I could not wait," said he. 

Ariadne vv^as close by, and they looked away from 
each other, lest any one else should overhear the 
answer of her eyes. 



jll jlnt|ijr. 



As in the rainbow's many-coloured hue, 

Here see we watchet deeoened with a blue, 

There a dark tawny witu ,. jjurple mixt, 

Yellow and flame, with streaks of green betwixt, 

A bloody stream into a blushing- run, 

And ends still with the colour which begun; 

Drawing- the deeper to a lighter stain, 

Bringing the lightest to the deep'st again, 

With such rare art each mingleth with his fellow. 

The blue with watchet, green and red with yellow. 

— William Browne. 



REUBEN was not ill in body, and no visible 
calamity had befallen him. He was an 
artist of some promise, and had a picture at the 
Academy. He was in love with a pretty rich young 
woman of the gay world, with a heart to spare for 
the first who could teach it. His dream had been 
at one stroke to w4n such fame as should warrant 
him in whispering, " My fame is yours and you my 
love." But he had loved too little or too much to 
betray his secret yet, and he had put a meaning in 
his painting which she had not read. She had con- 
gratulated him on its being well hung. Hiitc tllce 
lachry77tce ! He left London that night. It was a 
minor matter that his picture was not sold, and that 
he had reasons for preferring the cheapest third- 
class ticket that would bring him to the Channel's 
shores. The next morning an even, gray, fine mist 
fell, or rather hung, in silent, moveless gloom over 
earth, and sea, and sky. The cliffs were low and 
sandy, but patches of heather spoke of days when 
all color was not blotted out of view. Reuben 
turned mechanically away from the straggling water- 

131 



132 AT ANCHOR. 

ing-place towards the open coast, and when he had 
reached the point where the down was highest, 
above the sandy ruts of the cHff road, he threw 
himself on the elastic heath-tufts and set himself to 
meditate on the universal grayness. 

The unfortunate never know how fiercely they 
have clung to their one last hope till the moment 
when that too has failed. One by one lesser objects 
of desire elude the grasp, and each disappointment 
is borne, to the victim's own amaze, with hardly 
weakened courage ; for, without knowing it, each 
succeeding disappointment only serves to nourish 
the strong surviving hope for the one bliss that shall 
make amends for all the rest. And then at last — 
some put off the day of waking so long that their 
own last sleep comes before it — but to some at last 
comes the moment of bewilderment when the life- 
long desire is frozen by the blast of final depriva- 
tion ; the last doom of denial is uttered from without, 
and despair sweeps like a hurricane over every sense ; 
and then, amidst the very bitterness of blank despair, 
comes a vision of the double death. Even this 
might have been borne like the rest, if only hope 
'were left — of something, ever so little, anything — 
but a shadow of the slightest thing, still in front to 
hope for. 

It was so with Reuben now. He had lived the 
double life of man and artist, and again and again 
he had failed in both. It is needless to rehearse the 



A T ANCHOR. 133 

trivial details, the recuiTing discouragements, which 
he had defied, thinking, " Yet a few more months, 
then wxeks, then interminable days — and then, and 
then — she will see, and surely she will understand. 
I will not tell her that my fate hangs upon her 
seeing. If my spirit speaks to hers from the canvas, 
there is no need ; and if it does not speak, if she 
cannot or does not choose to hear, it is not for me to 
beg for mercy, to force from her kindness words that 
do not spring from her own desire to speak — to me 
alone of all men. It may be she will not speak. 
If so, that will be over, and one may live thereafter 
as one can. But perhaps, perhaps, perhaps — oh ! 
if she should have that to say^ to say to me, which 
my soul would give life, death and eternity to 
hear ! " 

This had been the burden oF his dreams, and she 
had not spoken. He had prayed before, like the 
great poet in his immortal agony — " And if you 
leave me, do not leave me last! " " How can she 
leave me," he muttered, " when she never came.'*" 
She had not crossed the threshold of his studio ; if 
she had, alone there, would she have understood.^ 
She never understood the passion of longing which 
prompted his timid suggestion, would she not like 
to come ? She had smiled with uncomprehending 
courtesy, and he was just in his misery. How 
could she have known what he never dared to say .'' 
He had spent his strength in silencing the jealous 



134 AT ANCHOR. 

rage which filled him when a happy, thoughtless 
youth won easily the promise of her presence — 
was it at a cricket-match, or where ? Nay, but he 
wanted too much himself to be jealous of those 
who won lesser boons ; his wishes had dared to 
wander boundlessly, and this was the end of his 
infinite longings. He questioned himself incredu- 
ously, was this less than nothingness the end? 

He lay upon the heather in the falling mist, 
stunned, bewildered, understanding at last that he 
had staked his life upon a single throw, and he had 
lost. It was like the end of one of those year-long 
games of chance played by barbarians. East and 
West, in the far-ofi' past, and like the hero of such 
tales, he had lost himself and all he had, and the 
game must go on without him, for he had nothing 
left to stake. His chance was over, once and for 
ever. He could not look to win by the help of 
Time's revenges, for he was no longer able even to 
play, though the maddest run of luck should lure 
him. It felt strange to be alive when every hope 
was dead and eveiy purpose starved and atrophied. 
" But," he thought, " it is no concern of mine now. 
Since my soul passed out of my own keeping into 
hers, it was she, not I, who had the power to dis- 
pose of all its future." 

The mist was growing lighter over the sea ; cloud 
and horizon began to be distinguishable, and streaks 
of gray above and below grew transparent, as if 



AT ANCHOR. 1 35 

colored lights of red and yellow were shining far 
away behind them. Level gray moisture still hung 
upon the land, and all round there was a silence 
that might be felt. Reuben closed his eyes w^earily ; 
he had not slept for several nights. His eyes were 
hot, and there was a dull throbbing above the 
brows. His limbs ached ; long-continued fatigue 
and the forcibly postponed consciousness of bodily 
discomfort were taking their revenge, and for a 
moment his mental M^retchedness seemed forgotten 
in - the sense of utter physical exhaustion and dis- 
tress. The momentary oblivion was like a breath 
of chloroform in the midst of pain. The feeling of 
bodily discomfort was faintly but distinctly pleas- 
urable, and as Reuben gave himself up to it he 
thought dreamily that this explained the self-tor- 
turing passions of asceticism. When the soul is 
sick to death, bodily pain is the only possible source 
of relief, the relief that comes from a change of 
suffering. For a few moments mind and body were 
almost unconscious together ; the pause was more 
like faintness than sleep ; but before his eyes opened 
again to confront the full visage of his grief, he felt 
with dim astonishment, and something almost akin 
to self-reproach, tliat his overmastering misery did 
not even now wholly exclude every other mode of 
consciousness. He felt the shallowness of his mis- 
ery as an aggravation of its unsounded depths of 
bitterness. 



136 AT ANCHOR, 

With the instinct that makes us say " Look ! ^ 
when we wish for the mind's attention, Reuben 
opened his eyes to see if there was any escape from 
the encompassing grayness, any change in the sur- 
rounding gloom to wan-ant this strange feeble im- 
pulse towards embracing a lesser pain. The sun 
was hidden, but its light was struggling intermit- 
tently through the clouds. The heavy gi*ay curtain 
of opaque mist which had seemed to hang between 
his eyes and the familiar world was not lifted ; it only 
seemed to dissolve into shadowy colors, meaning- 
less and manifold, like those which herald the trans- 
formation scene in a Christmas pantomime. Sea 
and sky had melted again into one ; but varied 
shades of color, in pale mimicry of the rainbow's 
bands, seemed to divide the continuous upright 
bank of vapor that veiled or shadowed forth the 
actual scene. It was too fantastic to be beautiful, 
and the artist was too sad to take any interest in the 
vagaries of nature ; but the returning memory of 
despair kept his consciousness awake, and he felt 
rather than saw opened out before him such a rain- 
bow as might span Styx and Phlegethon when 
infernal lightnings play upon slow showers of 
poisoned mud. The indigo band of the horizontal 
rainbow lay where a belt of weedy sea was over- 
shadowed by the darkest cloud. The shallow 
waters were turbid from the last night's swell, and 
there may have been a sandbank behind the reef, 



AT ANCHOR. 1^7 

helpirtg to color the dull waves red. The half- 
lurid light from above lit up the reddish strip of sea, 
that melted then into pale metallic yellow where a 
break in the clouds was reflected on the sullen 
surface ; and then the same shaded streaks of gray, 
blue and red, with green and yellow lights, 
repeated themselves in the sky above, as in the 
mirage the scene reflects itself upon the sky, instead 
of earth and sea being mirrored in smooth waters 
underneath. The unearthly hues were not without 
a mysterious grace, but they had no charm for 
Reuben : he had done with the world of m.en, and 
it was an added mockery that nature should have 
new tricks to play oft' before his careless and reluc- 
tant eyes. 

For this was the burden of his wonder now. All 
was over, and the strange thing is, how little differ- 
ence it seemed to make. Her life, sunrise and 
sunset, the work and pleasure of indifferent friends, 
all this would go on just as before ; every material 
care and difficulty, and the one duXy Reuben never 
thought to question, remained unchanged in pros- 
pect. He wished never to touch a brush again ; 
but it was not painting to color canvases for hire, 
and how else could he earn the money he must have 
to keep his lame young brother in the country home, 
whence he wrote, only yesterday, of his happiness 
and mending health } And if Reuben painted for 
pay, how could he do less than his best work, and 



138 AT ANCHOR. 

who would know the difference when none of the 
accustomed skill had left his fingers, only the light 
of hope his heart ? And he had been wont to call 
it simony if men sold work done by skilled hands 
while the heart and thoughts were far away ! 

A light brown rain-cloud drifted like a waterspout 
athwart the motionless gray background. Was he 
to live and walk a soulless ghost among the living, 
a moving shadow of unknown pain ? Nothing had 
been real in his life but the loss of it ; all the rest 
was vain imagination, that had passed current with 
his fellows for reality, while he himself could make- 
believe its truth ; and now he must still walk among 
the living, veiling the grim forms of death and pain, 
who lodged devouringly in the broad palaces his 
imagination had reared for hope and love. Nothing 
was changed outside. The moments were long, and 
again and again he looked upon the gray mist ; he 
felt its clammy touch as he watched the pale colors 
in their shadowy dance, varying yet the same, ever 
pale and shadowy and weird. So it was, and so it 
would be through such years as the prisoner for life 
only dares to think of when they end. The life- 
sentenced convict may hope for death, or escape, or 
a ticket of leave ; but Reuben could not even hope 
for death, which would leave his little brother to 
the cold charity of the busy world. 

There was a buoy some way out in the Channel, 
the only token of a sharp sunken rock. As it rose 



AT ANCHOR. 139 

and sank with the ground swell, Reuben's sympa- 
thies went out towards it as a living thing. It clings 
to its anchorage with that tenacity that made men 
choose the anchor for the sign of hope ; it clings 
blindly with brute fidelity to its forced anchorage, 
but it has nothing to fear or hope from storm or 
sunshine : life and death are for the craft that thread 
the Channel beyond. And then his mind wandered 
back to the despised canvas. Did she know that 
every line and every tint was born directly of her 
influence, was inspired by her gracious smile, or 
prompted by her grave opinion .'' It was her work, 
and she did not own it ; it was the monument of 
his love, the only relic left him of his hopeful life in 
sight of her ; and the only relic of her left to him 
was a relic, not of her, only of what she had declined 
to receive at his hands. The intensest conscious- 
ness does not soliloquize in words ; if he had been 
forced to seek them, they would have seemed few 
and empty. It is hard, ineffably hard ! It seems to 
be true. What then? It cannot be true. It is 
true. Oh me ! and it is hard ! 

And then the sense of dreary anchorage upon a 
hidden duty faded, and he felt like a drowning 
man, clutching at he knew not what as strong 
waves sucked him back, bruised and battered, to 
foreseen destruction ; and then it was not the boat's 
gunwale, nor the slippery rock, or yielding herbage 
that he was grasping in the hard death struggle^ 



HO AT ANCHOR. 

but a soft, firm hand, warm and gentle to the touch, 
and to be saved by that was a pleasure, even if the 
salvation had been death. But then — it was hardly 
a dream, though the hand felt very like hers as he 
had said " Good-by " only the afternoon before, — 
then he seemed to feel those soft sweet fingers 
firmly and gently unloosening the clutch by which 
he clung to them and life. What right had he to 
cling to her ? Yet he clung, and with gentle irre- 
sistible touch she unclasped his clinging fingers ; 
and as in a dream one falls through space, waking 
prostrate with a palpitating heart, so Reuben won- 
dered, was it all a dream, as his eyes opened again 
upon the mist, and he loosed the convulsive grasp 
which crushed and half uprooted the wiry heather 
shoots. 

There is a strange incredulity in some sick men 
when at last the skilled judgment pronounces that 
their days are numbered. Very few can grasp, 
while they still live, and suffer no more — it may be 
less — than yesterday, that a day is coming, is near, 
when they, their living selves, will be numbered 
with the painless dead. They come back again and 
again to the thought with a sacred surprise, how 
should so strange a tale be true ? So Reuben again 
and again faced his blank surprise ; his world had 
turned to a shadow of dark, cold emptiness. How 
could he live } And yet not a visible reason for his 
life and effort had been withdrawn from the world 



AT ANCHOR. 141 

of his fellows' sight and feeling. His mind was 
dazed, his limbs paralyzed ; every sense but that of 
sight seemed closed, and what he saw was only like 
a shadow of w^hat he felt. It crossed his mind like 
a recollection from some former state of existence, 
that a clear horizon lay behind the mist, that some- 
times the sun shone upon clear outlines of the rock 
where rolling waves might break in spray ; and so 
he knew — by an effort he recalled to memory the 
knowledge — that the world had not ceased to live 
and love, to labor, suffer and aspire, because he 
was cut off from living partnership in its cares and 
hopes. 

Hours had passed, and the mist was falling still. 
The spirit of his waking dreams had changed. The 
many-colored world, looming dimly through the 
veil of universal grayness, seemed to float in space, 
like a child's toy balloon, but he and it were held 
together -as if the visionary earth and sea were 
anchored on his aching heart, as if the iron that 
entered into his soul was the solid, crushing im- 
movable shadow of the hope that was gone from 
him. 

He had no thought of moving; distant sounds 
fell without meaning on his ears, till all at once 
he was startled by the shriek of a railway whistle, 
that began strangely so as to accompany and pro- 
long a sea-gull's cry. The sound jarred upon his 
quivering frame, and w^ith an ostrich-like instinct 



142 AT ANCHOR. 

he hid his face, lying with upstretched arms upon 
the sandy slope. He sought to be alone with his 
grief, to gather all his strength together, if so be that 
he might bear its weight. And as if in answer 
to his desire, a space of silence was granted him, a 
respite from the sights and sounds of the outer 
world. He was alone with his grief; he seemed to 
be lying in a world apart, like one in bodily pain, 
whose only striving is to endure ; and then all at 
once a rush of feeling, too massive to waste itself 
in the unspoken words of conscious thought, swept 
over his struggling will. Endurance was swallowed 
up in pain ; he moaned aloud. He had tasted the 
bitterness of death ; a death-like stillness fell upon 
soul and body. A low moan coming from far off 
seemed like the echo of his own lost utterance. But 
his sorrow would henceforth keep silence, and the 
melancholy wailing of the wind upon the telegraph 
wires grew louder and more frequent as eold gusts 
began to gather the mist into watery clouds. 

Reuben was wet through, stiff, and weary to the 
point which makes change of place a luxurious 
change of uneasiness. He rose to his feet and 
stretched the cramped, chill limbs, and ran cold 
fingers through his salt wet hair. He made an 
effort to awake. It could not all be a bad dream, 
but a man should rouse himself to know the worst. 
What was the worst? His thought was, " I would 
sell my soul to be free to cut my throat to-night I 



AT ANCHOR. 143 

The devil take it ! Why isn't there even a devil to 
take body and soul at a gift, w^hen one asks nothing 
better than to be lid of both, to escape the curse of 
life's long emptiness ? " He was not an irreverent 
youth, nor much given to sw^earing as a rule, and 
the unwonted invocation helped to rouse him. He 
smiled rather grimly and said to himself, " Even if 
there were a devil to go to, it wouldn't be much 
use now." And then, standing upright in the mist, 
he looked at the mock rainbow over the sandbanks, 
and a vague temptation possessed him. There was 
no hope, no outlook, no heaven of hope in front, no 
way of salvation for soul or body. Was it possible 
that there might be a pleasant way of sinning.^ " I 

wish " he began, and then he laughed aloud 

and pulled himself together more wakefully, and 
tried to put some sane merriment in his laugh. " I 
am glad I don't wish for anything, if I can wish for 
nothing better than that there was a devil for me to 
go to ! " 

And so he v/ent back to the station and caught 
the Parliamentary train to town ; and his landlady 
hoped he had had a pleasant journey and would not 
fail to change his socks. 



m ®nr Jrall^rs. 



And here, as lamps across the bridge turn pale 
In London's smokeless resurrection light, 
Dark breaks to dawn. — D. G. Rosetti. 



VI. 



I NOTICE that nothing tells a truer tale about 
the set of a person's prejudices or preferences 
than the thing which they jDut first in a comparison. 
If a man says his lady love is like the moon, if I 
were she I shouldn't be best pleased, for it means 
he cares more about star-gazing than love. If a 
man says the murmur of an excited crowd is like the 
roaring of the sea, he may be able to i:ell you what 
the wild waves say, but he neither knows nor cares 
much about the feeling of a mass of men stirred by 
one voice and passion. And so it is proved that I 
don't stand in the first rank among the votaries of 
nature when I confess that the sort of association 
that gives a pleasant feeling to a walk along the cliff 
in the October gales is that with the stream of trafiic 
along the narrow pavement of a city street at noon, 
with the tide of brown or blackish human specks 
that pour over Blackfriars Bridge at nine in the 
morning, or the jostling torrent streaming through 
the doors when Exeter Hall is going to be packed 
from roof to ceiling with eager half-taught men in 
"demonstration" of some half-learnt lesson of po- 

147 



148 MEN OUR BROTHERS* 

litical wisdom or justice. If I dash into the war of 
words myself, and turn for a moment the argument 
the way I wish, I do not say to myself, " Such as 
this was the pleasure I felt when, bathing with our 
host, I learnt to dive through the breakers, drift with 
the back-draught to the right moment, and then 
dive again and swim with the current towards the 
chosen landing." But I have felt instead among 
the London crowd, when the excitement of the 
passing contest was over, as if the charm of this 
face-to-face wrestling with the stream of kindred in- 
dependent passions was to me something like that 
other pleasure felt by the skilled swimmer in the 
dangerous element he had learned to master. 

But in general I think the things that interest me 
are interesting in themselves without the help of 
metaphor. I do not care so much about the varia- 
tions in an individual lot as for the ever-growing 
intricacy of the relations between each set of lives 
and a thousand other sets. I would rather be dead, 
buried and forgotten than have to live in sight of 
collisions and confusions one could do nothing to 
reconcile or harmonize. I can conceive no more 
fascinating ambition, no more entrancing aim, than 
that of unravelling the tangled threads of popular 
desire, and choosing for the unconscious many the 
one path along which all may move straight towards 
the sought content. 

You say it isn't easy.^ If it were easy, where 



MEN OUR BROTHERS. 149 

would the amusement be ? If it were impossible, I 
for one should despair of finding an interest in life. 
If you go in for practical politics, you deliberately 
make it your business to discover and divine, in 
order to defeat, the involuntary opposition offered 
by short-sighted interests to a systematic advocacy 
of the universal best. Whether one succeeds or 
fails, the contest is worth trying, and at least ennui 
is impossible while it lasts. 

Of course my political friends call me a doctri- 
naire prig Avhen I want to stick inconveniently close 
to general principles, or they are getting indefensi- 
bly warm about a temporary expedient ; and a repu- 
tation for priggishness is rather fatal to one's chance 
of becoming an accepted leader. But I would rather 
be free to want things done my own way than get 
more done by less logical demands. Hardly any of 
the men who have ruled their fellows have the 
supreme qualification of seeing their way straight 
to an absolutely ideal end. They grow impassioned 
and contend successfully over the establishment of 
a few axiomata media^ which, to my mind,, have 
neither the dignity of a first principle nor the ur- 
gency of a concrete fact. The "practical" politi- 
cian struggles towards a favorite partial reform as I 
would have men strive for the very millennium ; the 
sentimentalist cares for the wrongs and sufferings of 
an injured few as I would have men care about the 
mere possibility of iniquitous pain ; professional re- 



150 MEN OUR BROTHERS, 

formers, demagogues and agitators lose themselves, 
and are content to lose themselves, in w^orking the 
machinery towards a near result, which is only of 
value to me as a means or a symbol of approach to 
some change of universal scope. The means are 
good and welcome, but they are all alike mere means, 
and I care no more for the means I have to use 
myself than for those which prove effective in an- 
other hand. In fact, I think I care less : one's own 
range of action is so narrow, and one sees all round 
one's own blunders ; but if somebody else, from 
whom one does not expect infallibility at starting, 
does of his own accord, even in part, what we could 
only earn our own self-respect by doing completely 
and triumphantly, it seems so much clear, unex- 
pected gain. 

And then if, instead of being unforeseen, the pleas- 
ure has been carefully prepared by our own hands, 
if we have knowingly helped our neighbor towards 
the wisdom with which he delights us now, there is 
a double or triple satisfaction left for the mind to 
ruminate upon. We have planted a tree which will 
bear fruit, though our own efforts were barren al- 
ways ; and besides the fruit for this generation, 
seedlings and suckers will increase and multiply, so 
that in them the parent stock may remain green for- 
ever. I have the keenest sense of the usefulness of 
men who are not much missed when they die, be- 
cause their power has been spent in rearing inher- 



MEN OUR BROTHERS, 151 

itors of their own work and purpose. I think the 
Buddhists say, " Blessed is he who has shown the 
way," i.e.^ who has shown it to others, whether he 
travelled far along it himself or no. 

Entanglement in exacting practical affairs is not 
conducive to poetical meditation, even at the most 
witching hour of night. But on one particular 
occasion I had a companion, an intelligent fellow, 
but with something of the poetic temperament, and 
a melancholy twnst, that, if he had been an artist 
instead of a plasterer, w^ould have inspired medita- 
tions to the full as dismal as those of our friend 
" Reuben." We had our way to make through 
London pretty nearly from north-east to south-west, 
and his running comments upon all v\^e saw^ helped 
to fix the common sights in my memory. We had 
been at a local Trade Union meeting somewhere 
between Whitechapel and Stepney, and when we 
left, nearer one than twelve, it appeared that my 
friend had told his wife not to expect him home 
that night, as he would be kept late and could stop 
with a chum in the neighborhood of the meeting. 
This friend's wife turned out to be ill, and as Waters 
had to be at work in Lambeth by six, he agreed to 
halt in my chambers for the two or three hours' 
interval. 

I was in good spirits after an Interesting discus- 
sion of what seemed to me an important and pro- 
mising idea. Waters was indignant and depressed 



t52 MEN OUR BROTHERS. 

because the idea was met by opposition of a narrow 
and apparently selfish kind. The scheme was for 
a so-called "Federalization" of the various trade 
societies throughout the country, a fusion of inte- 
rests between the men of different trades, like the 
amalgamation already carried out in many impor- 
tant trades of independent local unions. Theoret- 
ically it seemed a logical, and indeed inevitable, 
development of the fundamental principles of trade 
unionism ; it seemed as if the laborer could only be 
really strong through association when all the differ- 
ent industries were pledged to support and reinforce 
each other in all reasonable demands, and to restrain 
unreasonable demands by the check of a responsible 
public opinion. 

Just as it has been found that the men in one 
town or one workshop will threaten a strike upon 
trivial personal grounds which the trade society as 
a body disallows, so it is to be expected that the 
excited passions of a large and united body of men 
may sometimes need to be overruled by the sober 
counsels of disinterested persons of their own class ; 
that sailors might preach forbearance to weavers, 
and -weavers patience and moderation to masons. 
In large towns the " Trade Council " aims at doing 
locally what a federal union of the trades would do 
for all England, and in my ignorance I thought the 
scheme had only to be proposed to meet with a 
hearty welcome, notably from the existing trade 



MEN OUR BROTHERS. t$^ 

Councils, whose dignity, 1 argued, must be increased 
by their acting as intermediaries between the small 
and large assemblies representing all the trades. 
But there are ambitions of all degrees of narrow-- 
ness, ii,nd the men who are accustomed to be of 
chief consequence on the trade council of a large 
town do not care to sink their importance by taking 
a subordinate part in a really national scheme ; and 
there was some justification even for the doubts of 
honest and unselfish practical men, who saw that 
some of the most talkative promoters of the new 
scheme were men who had not a solid reputation 
for industry and good faith in their own trade or 
neighborhood. It was a repetition in small of the 
old experience that visionaries and charlatans are 
more ready to take up with even true new lights 
than the sober mass of practical men. 

Waters was one of the exceptional men who see 
the broadest questions in a fair light without losing 
their grasp of the material details ; and just because 
he knew the scheme to be practical and possible, he 
was the more discouraged by finding it meet with 
but flimsy support and substantial opposition. I 
said, by way of encouragement, it was not so far 
from the present standpoint to the realization of 
our wishes here, as it was from the old conspiracy 
laws to the present state of things : with time and 
patience we should arrive, as our predecessors had 
done. 



1 54 ME;N OUR BR O THERS, 

He said, "Ay; and at the same cost. Did you 
ever think how many of the best men of two or 
three generations felt their hearts breaking, day by 
day, because of just such slowness in the progress 
towards right ? " 

I tried again, with my ow^n favorite topic of con- 
solation : "It is pleasant anyway to see that there 
is a possible solution of our difficulties ; that the 
only thing needed is to bring the practical leaders 
over to see the solution as their own, — there are no 
insuperable obstacles." 

He said, stopping as he spoke, and taking hold 
of the lamp-post by w^ay of a nov gtoj for his elo- 
quence, "I beg your pardon, Mr. James; but if 
you will allow me to say so, you, and gentlemen 
like you, remind me ver^- much of the poet Words- 
worth." 

I tried to intimate that this was an undeserv^ed 
compliment, but he proceeded to explain that it was 
intended otherwise. 

"I had never read much of Wordsworth," he 
continued, " till after something John Mill said to 
me once, much the same as what I read afterwards 
in his autobiography. I believed in Mill in a way 
one seldom believes in any one, least of all in gen- 
tlemen and philosophers ; and I bought a complete 
edition of Wordsworth, and spent one winter's 
evenings in reading his poems well through. And 
the conclusion I came to was, that he might be 



MEN OUR BROTHERS. 155 

very good reading for ladies and gentlemen who 
had never felt anything like the French Revolution 
themselves. Much of it was fine poetry for every- 
body ; but what Mill praised in it was only good 
morality for born aristocrats, who wanted to learn 
a little humanity, but were never likely to carry 
their learning too far. I never liked Shelley so 
well as when he saw through Peter Bell the Second 
and his 

Dim recollections 
Of pedlars tramping on their rounds ; 
Milk pans and pails, and odd collections 
Of saws and proverbs, and reflections 
Old parsons make in burying-grounds. 

' Burns, Shelley, were with us,' as Browning says, 
but Wordsworth — I should have liked to tell him 
to his solemn face that shepherds, pedlars, mad 
women, and all, were good for something more 
than figures in a landscape for him to feel wise and 
good in looking at. 

" The landscape /see is the other way. I was at 
Manchester for a Trades Congress once, and went 
up to the Cumberland lakes for the Saturday to 
Monday after. All Sunday I roamed upon the bare 
hills without meeting a living soul, and I grew 
savage to think of this glorious nature being enjoyed 
alone by a poet who cared no more for his fellowmen 
than for the picturesque stones and daffodils ; while 
T -, the engineer, and P , the brassfounder, 



15^ MEN OUR BROTHERS, 

and V , whom you knew in Westminster, and I 

and thousands more, who could love the stones and 
flowers as well as Wordsworth, and our brethren 
as our very selves, we by a fluke see these hills once 
in. a lifetime, if then, and then perhaps not without 
grudging the few shillings that we think should 
have gone elsewhere than on two or three days' 
pleasuring. Well, if you'll forgive me for saying 
so, when swells like you come among us and try to 
understand what we want, and do your best to help 
us, we can't help feeling now and then that what is 
life and death to us is after all only a moral kind 
of play to you. Like Wordsworth and his peasants, 
you make a kind of picture to yourselves of the life 
of the people, only you do it in scientific prose, 
instead of in poetry, that I can enjoy well enough 
when I forget the moral. Your pictures and his 
may be true enough — that isn't my quarrel ; but we 
want to live our own lives, not to sit for our pictures 
to be hung up in statesmen's libraries. You say, 
' Let's have a correct likeness first, and then we shall 
know where we are and be able to help.' But we 
feel all that you want to draw and more than 3''ou 
can see towards it, and the people won't stand still 
when they are hungry or in hot anger to let you find 
out things about them that they know by heart them- 
selves already, and they aren't grateful to those who 
ask them. And then I begin to think no one from 
outside can help us — no one who doesn't feel heart 



MEN OUR BROTHERS. 157 

and soul with us, as no one can feel who has never 
had the chance of doing more than sympathize ; 
and that we must wait for one of ourselves with 
brains to understand and power to act even while 
he feels. — But this is uncivil, ungrateful* talk, for 
which I ask your pardon, sir. I daresay you'll 
understand enough of how we feel to excuse my 
saying what comes uppermost." 

I frankly owned that Waters' instinct was just 
enough. As to Wordsworth, it may be part of my 
Philistinism, but I don't above half like him, and 
wasn't sorry to be furnished with a reason why. 
But as I understood something of my friend's grounds 
for irritation, I trusted that he might see enough of 
the other side to excuse my reluctance to surrender 
the intellectual freedom with which one starts, by 
abandoning one's self altogether to the current of 
sympathetic anger. When one has the good luck 
not to be the victim of a bad custom in the boot 
trade, does it make one a more useful citizen to feel 
as if the abolition of that custom was the most 
urgent duty laid on men? For a shoemaker the 
evil has its natural place and proportion in life, but 
if we — I said to him — " If we are to succeed in 
helping you at all, I think it must be chiefly at first 
by clearing away the mechanical difficulties in the 
way of your helping yourselves. The social ma- 
chinery hinders you now, we ought to tinker at it 
till we make it help instead ; and that is in itself 



158 MEN OUR BROTHERS. 

such a troublesome job that I am not sure whether 
you need grudge us the unsubstantial pay of a little 
harmless self-satisfaction when for a moment we 
think we see the track clear for a few yards in the 
jungle ahead, though we have still to get the troops 
and baggage wagons over the ground." 

We had been standing still during this discussion, 
and a policeman had stopped a few yards off to look 
at us. Waters jerked his shoulder towards the 
representative of the law, and said, " No. 91 thinks 
we are a suspicious-looking pair, and I suppose you 
would like me to be thankful that nevertheless we 
two meet as friends, with no worse aim than that of 
setting the world to rights." I assented, and felt 
mightily inclined to pass my arm through his as 
we walked on and dropped into broken chat on 
less exciting themes, but I did not dare. The mo- 
tion was natural, for we had reached the point of 
friendly freedom at which home truths can be ex- 
changed ; and it is possible he would have felt this 
as I did, and not have resented the familiarity at 
the moment. But then we should meet again, he 
in the company of his daily associates, and I among 
mine ; and I dreaded the involuntary, almost inevi- 
table, jar to so susceptible a nature when he imag- 
ined that such or such a stately swell, who might 
take my arm condescendingly in St. James' Street, 
would stare at the notion of my taking his in Cur- 



MEN OUR BROTHERS. 159 

tain Road. So we walked on side by side, merely 
keeping step together. 

Presently, to prevent the silence lasting so long 
as to make it awkward to speak again, I said the 
interminableness of London streets was a thing I 
never quite got used to. He agreed, and linked his 
assent on to our former subject by the remark that 
it was easier to interest one's self in statistics about 
so many thousand persons, than in their actual 
bodily presence as symbolized by so many miles of 
dwelling and sleeping rooms. " Cities," he went 
on, " have a solitude of their own, and I shouldn't 
quarrel with a poet who dwelt upon the crowded 
life as a sort of background, an inanimate scenery 
in front of which the little group of actors we see 
and know play out their part. When men are 
crowded together in great numbers, we cannot see 
them all at once as men ; at least, the only human 
element that can be brought before us vividly is the 
common beginning, end and middle of their lives 
as shown in the figures, that always seem so inhu- 
manly dry, about births, deaths and marriages. 
And yet it is just as real and moving a fate that you 
and I or any other mother's son should spend our 
days among this forest of hearths and dooi*ways, as 
that another branch of our same race should spend 
the years in company with dumb beasts, rarely or 
never seeing an unknown human face. In a single 
stroll we pass a thousand living men ; we don't so 



l6o MEN OUR BROTHERS. 

much as note their features ; and yet each one has a 
life of his own in which the rest have no place save 
as an unnoticed background. Imagine the still 
mountains compact of a million heaped-up, eager, 
conscious lives, and yet as still as the waste lying 
before us now." 

He stopped and pointed. We had reached a 
kind of carrefour ; a wide road with a tramway 
ended where it was crossed at an oblique angle by 
another narrower but still busy thoroughfare ; oppo- 
site the tramway two converging squalid streets met 
at this centre, and at right angles to it a dark, 
straight street, once of solemn, middle-class respec- 
tability, opened with a protest against the lurid 
glare of the gas-lamps and gin-palaces which stood 
sentinel at every other corner. I looked all around ; 
it was not the first time by many I had passed 
through such scenes, but then I had not been forced 
to halt and note their features by a comrade to 
w^hom no scene could be expressionless. I am no 
hand at descriptions, and when I compare my recol- 
lections of that night with the other street scenes I 
have tried to notice since, I know that I only saw 
by the light of his stronger feeling. 

The air of London streets by night is almost 
always brown, the color that is fog by daylight ; 
this darkness fills the vistas down opening streets, 
it hangs between the houses, and stretches like a 
level sea between the roofs and lowest clouds ; but 



MEN OUR BROTHERS, l6l 

in this region it is seldom one so mucii as sees the 
clouds that hide the starlight ; one sees so little 
through the thick brown air that it serves itself for 
a cloud — veiling no gods, however. Now and 
then a red window opens through the darkness, 
like the flash in mid-air from a lighthouse when 
storms hide the solid building. One must know 
beforehand what is there to guess that the light 
pours from the unveiled window of some seventh 
story in a warehouse, where night is be-ing turned 
into day over an urgent job ; or it may be merely 
the illuminated face of a church clock, with the 
tower, and the hands and figures blotted out alike, 
or the shell of an advertising magic lantern, with 
black letters in praise of somebody's boots or hats, 
ready to break out in relief against the light. 

But everywhere upon the dull brown pervading 
mist there rests the reflection of a lurid glare from 
the dim gas-lamps, and the light that leaks thi'ough 
shop-fronts and the closed shutters or ragged blinds, 
behind which women sew, and some — thank 
God I — sojne households gather in homely happi- 
ness for the evening's rest. And as the streets 
darken, w^hen the last shops are closed, and the 
ragged children have almost disappeared up myste- 
rious courts and archways, when the wheel traffic 
is ending, and only a few rapid, silent passengers 
^re scattered on the footway, it seems as If the dim 
light by which all the children of misery grope 



1 62 MEN OUR BROTHERS. 

their way to an early death was turned inwards ; 
the streets are darker, but the glow upon the murk 
air only seems the deeper red, as if, like glow-worms 
in the dark, each smoking lamp or flaring farthing 
candle flickered with a living light, casting upon 
the sombre streets the sad shadow of the slow 
agony and dumb strivings of stupid, drunken, caged 
humanity. 

As darkness that may be felt, the silence falls like 
lead, more heart-breaking than the rarer shouts 
from a brawling party still unwilling to seek its 
comfortless lair within. The strange half light 
seemed to mask the sordid familiarity of the street 
prospect, the subdued passion in my companion's 
voice added to the sense of awe ; it was like a 
dream, in which some new poet, wise and merciful 
and stern, led the way through a real Inferno, 
where sins and judgments walked hand in hand, 
and the children shared their fathers' load. The 
air seemed to grow hotter and heavier ; the red 
darkness reminded me of the glare round the 
horizon from the furnaces at night in the mid- 
land Black Country, but the sultriness, I thought, 
could come from no honest fire of coals. I heard 
the tramp of heavy measured steps upon the pave- 
ment, and something like a fear startled me for a 
moment. If this was hell, who but I could be the 
criminal, Ihe stranger keeping the laws of another 
land? 



MEN OUR BROTHERS. 1 63 

Waters too seemed oppressed. He had been 
standing bareheaded, and now turned his face up- 
wards, and as he said " Thunder," I felt large drops 
of rain fall one by one. We started on our way 
again, walking briskly, but we had still far to go, 
and as we reached London Wall, the slowly gath- 
ering storm broke over us. As if at the signal of 
a clap of thunder, the clouds came down in torrents, 
and my friend had a day's work to do without 
changing his clothes. We turned for shelter into 
the first wide dooi*way, where another pair of way- 
farers had taken refuge before us. They did not 
notice us, but I looked under cover of my umbrella, 
and I cannot forget the two faces that I saw. A tall 
young soldier, very young, with a small oval face, 
brown hair, and just good, honest, boyish features, 
but he was looking at the girl who held his arm 
with an expression 1 had no words to represent. I 
can only describe it now to those who have seen 
Salvini in Othello. If you have seen his 

Come, Desdemona, I have but an hour 
Of love, 

you have seen the look with which this transfigured 
ploughboy looked at his sweetheart's face. And 
she ? Some years ' his senior, and looking maybe 
older than her age, the girl's thin, plain face had a 
hard, eager look, her eyes moved restlessly, and 
her laugh sounded strained. They had been at 



164 MEN OUR BROTHERS, 

some music-hall together, and were comparing the 
amusement of this and other evenings. The faces 
interested me, and I fancied I knew the boy's regi- 
ment, but I did not care to hear the talk. Presently, 
however, the girl's voice seemed to be raised ; she 
was only asking, " Did you ever go to the Oxford.'' " 
and then, in a hurried, uneasy tone, like the scared 
restlessness of her eyes, she added, " I went once 
with a cousin." It was still the first act, and 
Othello only smiled beatifically. The rain still fell, 
we affected to turn our backs upon the couple and 
their voices sank ; presently Waters burst out, "I 
can't stand this ! " and strode off furiously through 
the rain. He had keen ears, and when I overtook 
him he said he could not bear to hear the woman 
lying ; she was asking the lad for money and then 
pretending she did not like to take it ; he raged 
inwardly ; the divine dreaming of the youth was 
nothing to him, nothing to set against our instinct 
that his bliss would be a shortlived dream ; but the 
end of his indignation was charitable in a way. 
He cursed the girl and her whole tribe, and yet he 
turned angrily to me : " She may be doing no harm 
beyond just cheating the boy out of his few spare 
shillings ; she may work honestly for a starving 
pittance, and take those few shillings home as duti- 
fully as any other earnings ! " 

We hurried on through the blinding storm ; the 
rain came down like slanting sheets of water, and 



MEN OUR BROTHERS. 165 

then as it beat upon the pavement, the drops re- 
bounded and rose like a low mist along the street 
and the dark glittering pavement ; and then as the 
drops grew smaller the patter sank into a hiss as if 
the earth itself w^ere hot, and the fierce showers 
were turned to steam as they touched the burning 
crust. The air was heavy ; there was no coolness 
in the wind that now and then swept along the 
ground whirling together the low mist and steam- 
ing spray, which by some trick of sense looked 
white as it drifted through the lurid, Malebolgian 
night. 

We were near the Temple, and after the manner 
of thunder-showers the rain was ceasing as ^ve 
reached cover. It was three o'clock ; w^e were 
both wet through, and I had no fire to dry Waters' 
clothes ; but I offered him a bath, while I boiled 
some water over the gas for coftee, and tossed him 
a dry suit with the hope he wasn't too much of an 
aristocrat to wear another man's clothes w^ien his 
own were drenched. He laughed pleasantly and 
submitted, and in a slightly worn shooting suit of 
mine looked more of a gentleman than in his own • 
Sunday clothes. He had taste enough to see, and 
too little vanity to be vexed at this, and it was in a 
pleasant tone of equality that he laughed at the im- 
possibility of men being really equal, while they 
couldn't all afford to employ the same tailors. This 
launched us in fresh discussion as to whether there 



1 66 MEN OUR BROTHERS. 

was really anything in the finest fruits of social 
civilization which might not, if we all pleased, be 
made cheaply accessible to every one, and whether, 
further, this same every one could and would be 
found able to enjoy the accessible good. A couple 
of hours passed wakefully over coffee, cigars, and 
this inexhaustible theme. 

Then it was time for him to start, and as I 
couldn't, for very shame, go to sleep when my 
friend's day's work began, I decided to walk with 
him across the river to Waterloo, and run down 
by the 5.40 train to breakfast with the secretary of 
a new branch of the Agricultural Laborers' Union. 
He had wanted me to come later in the day to a 
projected meeting, but other engagements forbade, 
and I was glad of the chance to see him all the 
same, and get him to take up the tw^o or three sug- 
gestions I should have liked to make to his members 
myself. I should thus be back in town by twelve, 
when a case I was engaged in threatened to come 
on, and also — right or wrong, I must confess this 
weighed with me a little — Waters w^ould not be 
disturbed in his plastering by any scorn for gentle- 
manly idleness. I ought not, however, to have 
thought of such a chance, for the radical refinement 
of his nature proved itself by the dropping of all 
half-bred, jealous susceptibilities the moment he 
became my guest. 

We were good friends before, but the night's 



MEN OUR BROTHERS. 167 

intercourse left our friendshijD more confiding ; for 
this reason I am' glad it should be remembered, 
and remembered, if my friends will be so kind, in 
association with the morning, not the midnight sky. 

-^Vt five o'clock we sallied forth again, just as 
the first cold glimmer of daylight began to put out 
the street lamps. We walked by the riverside, but 
the reflection of the cur^'ing• rows of lisrht in the 
water had lost its brilliancy, and as yet the sky was 
all dark, unbroken gray, the smooth dull gray which 
is the surest herald of a hot sun at noon. It vv^as 
too early for my train, so we walked together as far 
as Westminster. 

There had been a long sitting, and Pat O'Reilly, 
Vvdio lives over the v/ater, hailed me hilariously from 
a cab as he was rattling home across the bridge. I 
said to Waters, " vSo we are not the only ones who 
have been makinsr a niofht of it." 

It is one of his eccentricities to despise parlia- 
mentary government, and he scowled (I w^asn't in 
the House then) , ' ' Perhaps we are the only ones 
who haven't been doing mischief the while." 

After all he is less accustomed to do ^vithout his 
night's rest than I am, and he was sufiering from 
the re-action after an unwonted strain. We stopped 
in the middle of Westminster Bridge, and he gave a 
troubled sigh. 

" * Man goeth forth unto his work and to his 
labor till the evening.' I've nothing to say against 



1 68 MEN OUR BROTHERS. 

that, and it is very difficult to know, when we are 
grumbhng against our lot, whether we are \\^antmg 
to shirk the common, wholesome discipline of labor, 
or whether we merely want to divide the load more 
fairly ; whether we are wanting others to work 
with us of their own accord, or whether we want, 
in malice or charity, to make them work by force, 
since they won't choose for themselves what they 
tell us is the noblest calling. And if I, who have 
tried to see things fairly, and have nothing in par- 
ticular to complain of myself — (we've got the nine 
hours, and I take forty shillings a week pretty well 
all the year round) — if I can't help feeling this sort 
of angry doubt sometimes, can you wonder that 
there is the anger always without the doubt among 
the hundreds of thousands who sometimes work 
long hours for low pay, and sometimes walk the 
streets for no pay at all, who want more money 
than they can earn for pleasures that are, after all, 
no worse and far less costly than those rich scamps 
enjoy without having to earn the chance, and who 
would like best of all to be as idly extravagant as 
their idlest ' betters ' ? It's a tangled job altogether, 
and though I don't suppose we should mend it by 
making a clean sweep, unless we all grew wiser 
first, one feels sometimes as if it would be a relief 
just to clear the ground of everything that is, so that 
you and I at least might have no share of responsi- 
bility in so much that's wrong." 



MEN OUR BROTHERS, 169 

The good fellow delivered himself of this charita- 
bly subversi\'c sentence in a slow, meditative way, 
that was not without its humorous aspect. We 
leant against the parapet of the bridge and looked 
up and down the full stream. Towards the east the 
gray mist seemed to be sinking slowly downwards, 
the clouds were vanishing into a light haze overhead 
and thickening fog below^ The dome and cupola of 
the cathedral just showed above the mist, and some- 
thing like the ghost of a pale twilight illuminated 
the shadowy apparition. And upon the river below, 
where the brown fog ^vas thickest, suddenly there 
shone out sparkles, red and bright like the rising 
sun, which wx did not see. 

Waters ^vas easily turned from the contemplation 
of his wrongs. " I always wonder," he said, " why 
the ripples see the sun before we do." 

I am generally divided betv^^een contempt for the 
narrowness of these men when they rail at the few 
for grievances which they themselves could redress 
with a strong hand if they pleased, and admiration 
for the magnanimity Avith which they tolerate their 
weak oppressors. The fortunes of the world turn 
upon the magnanimity of its conquerors. I asked 
Waters if he had read Machiavelli — he reads Italian, 
and he is an admirer of Leopardi — and when he 
said no, I quoted the lines — 

Et e e sempre fii e sempre fia, 

Che '1 bene succeda al male, il male al ben, 

E r un sempre cagion dell' altro sia. 



170 MEN OUR BROTHERS. 

' ' They are the key to the stationary revolutions o^ 
tn& past ; if the selfish many merely divide the spoils 
of the selfish few, it has all to begin over again, and 
w^ill end no better than before. Say the victory is 
in your hands now ; you are the strongest ; your 
rightful dues have been denied; you have your 
brother by the throat ; he is in your power. Sup- 
pose he says, like an ancient debtor, ' Have patience 
with me and I will pay thee all ' ? " 

Waters gave a low whistle. " That's one way of 
putting it. You aristocrats are too clever by half. 
' Have patience with me and I will pay thee all ! ' 
So tve are the unmerciful creditors ! " And he 
laughed again with frank amusement. 

There was a coftee-stall at the corner of the Bridge, 
where our ways parted. A crossing-sweeper, got 
up a la Turque^ whom I had ahva}'s taken to be a 
sham, was having his breakfast there. I answered, 
" Nay, the world's future turns upon your showing 
mercy. Have patience with us and, Inshallah ! we 
w411 pay you all ! " 

We shook hands and parted ; but I turned back 
once more to say, " If you have patience, and we do 
not pay, make a clean sweep then." 



Jftujkinj In l|c ila$$. 



Nondum amabam et amare amabam : quaerebam quod amarem, amans 
amare, et oderam securitatem, et viam sine muscipulis. 

— S, Augustine. 



VII. 



I AM not going to trace "the epitaph of glory 
fled," but of a mistake that stopped so long to 
look in the glass that it never got itself fairly made. 
I always feel sorry for the noxious plants, fungi, 
affections, reptiles, and am.bitions that humanity 
sends half grown to Hades. Poor Hades, too, thus 
populated like a new Van Diemen's Land 1 But to 
the point. 

It has done nothing but rain for the last week ; 
yesterday twelvemonths was gloriously fine. I went, 
as was my custom in those days, to watch the setting 
sun and the rising tide from the dangerous height 
of the Camel's Back, otherwise known as the Slab, 
a miniature rocky peninsula, so called from its pecu- 
liar shape and the character of its western surface — 
a sheer reach of unbroken rock, rising some eighty 
feet from an inaccessible shingle beach. The strata 
have been half inverted and then stayed, so that the 
action of rain and land streams cleaves the grain of 
the rock in an almost vertical line. This curious 
clifl' stretches out into the Atlantic at right angles 
to the shore ; its eastern side is steep but jagged ; 

173 



174 LOOKING IN THE GLASS. 

the top is an horizontal a7'ete^ a faint sheep-track 
taking up all the width, and even this is interrupted 
by one pinnacle — the hump of the camel — round 
which you must scramble to reach the end, where 
showers of snowy foam dash up from the rocks 
below. In windy weather this pathway was not 
practicable at all. The tale was told of a coast- 
guardman who was blown ofT it into the sea, as he 
was trying to carry the rocket apparatus to the end 
in reach of a sinking smack with three men holding 
on to the rigging. Once or twice, without any 
assignable cause, my head failed me at the passage, 
and I turned back. Ordinarily I went on to a spot 
about two yards from the end of the point, where 
the rock had begun to break up into spray- worn 
fragments, and the escarpment was a shade less 
steep. Here, on a slope like a not too gothic gable, 
are two ledges, just wide enough to serve, one as 
seat, and the other as footstool, to any lover of unin- 
habited nature. The real charm of the seashore is 
in its lifelessness. 

On the afternoon I speak of, I had been sitting 
sonje two hours divided between Beranger's songs 
and the sense of perilous ease attendant on perfect 
physical comfort in a situation where the nerves are 
not quite at rest. The whole of the narrow cove 
below me, or rather behind — for deep water was 
running at my feet, and I had to look backwards 
to realize the height of the straight, foreshortened 



LOOKING IN THE GLASS. 175 

precipice, down which the eye fell easily — the 
rugged inlet that had taken lives, bad and indiffer- 
ent, seemed tilled up to the overhanging turf at top 
with a rosy mist. The sky had been too cloudless 
for much display of coloring, but the crimson after- 
glow was deep and oppressive. It was one of those 
nights wdien the brassy red of the heavens' concave 
seems impending to crush the beholder ; it draws 
nearer and nearer, and then — I for one had rather 
die under its ever-nearing weight — then the glori- 
ous blood of gods, the awful spiritual life, curdles 
and pales ; black cinders and ashy emptiness mock 
the sight, and a chill of disappointment and self- 
contempt ends the diurnal tragedy. 

So it was once more, and then an afterpiece of 
moony resignation ; the icy horrors of another sun- 
rise have frightened back to us the softest breezes 
of noon, a less arrogant luminary rewards our forti- 
tude, and a purer light streams over sea and sky ; 
but the earth is gray till morning — pale gray with 
sharp black shadows. 

But the last ray of sunlight had not quite left the 
sky I was watching shiveringiy ; tlie plash of the 
waves deadens every other sound, and I did not hear 
a footstep on the path behind me. I started and 
nearly slipped — where shall I find another so easy 
descent to the ghostly groves of Avcrnus? — when 
a light rug was thrown softly on my shoulders from 
above. I looked up, and saw dimly the face of a 



176 LOOKING IN THE GLASS. 

man some five-and-thirty, whose features struck me 
as familiar — I was going to say pleasing. I, at any 
rate, liked the ox-like melancholy of his dark brown 
eyes, and the gentleness, which one is almost 
obliged to call sweetness, of his smile, candid like 
that of a German professor. He smiled while apol- 
ogizing for the abruptness with which he had exe- 
cuted Mrs. Latham Brown's commission, and 
dilating on her anxiety lest the sudden chill should 
affect my chest, then supposed to be delicate. I 
gravely thanked him for having removed the only 
difficulty in the way of my passing the night where 
I was, and then he continued to talk. 

He (I soon recognized Mr. Herbert L ) had 

arrived unexpectedly on a visit to his cousins ; this 
was the beginning — of our acquaintance, I mean. 
Let me make haste on to the end — the end, because 
of course it is a chance whether we meet again after 
he has traced most rivers in Asia and Africa to their 
very uninteresting sources. In the course of the 
next month we met constantly, as people do in the 
country, and as constantly fell into the inconclusive, 
desultory converse touching nature, art, and their 
compound humanity, natural to people not old or 
illustrious enough to have lost the trick of opinion- 
atedness. He had a knack of turning up at all my 
favorite haunts, and did so with sucli a fatality, that 
I had a momentary and absurd feeling of injury at 
his not having discovered my chief favorite of alj, 



LOOKING IN THE GLASS. i77 

where I went before breakfast the morning of the 
day we Icrft Westream. 

The approach v/as through the abbey grounds, 
an unoccupied 2^l6^sure seat much favored by 
tourists. Avoiding the house, one passed into a 
rough shrubbery path winding downwards on the 
left hand, and on the right shortly ending in a rock- 
hewn staircase. This I followed through a natural 
fissure enlarged by art, and emerged on a belfry- 
like ledge, just broad enough to give standing room 
for two, or to let 'ta^ solitary visitor lie at length, 
and, leaning on his elbows, look over the edge and 
watch the pebbles drop sheer into the blue water. 
I was near the top of a precipitous sandstone cliff, 
on the face of which sea-ferns and choice flowers 
defied the collector ; immediately belovv' was a deep 
inlet of clear water washing into quaint, inacces- 
sible caverns : in front an overhanging rock threat- 
ening my loop-hole from above, while the mossy 
twisted roots and stem of a stunted oak made a 
pillow for arm and head. Hereon I leant, losing 
count of time as the dazzling sun, the cool glitter 
of the early hour, the startled breaths of a southern 
wind, the gulls swooping and sailing beneath me, 
lulled me into a sort of dizzy rapture, till the 
pleasure melted into a half-conscious dread — could 
it be that Nature's gifts were free ? — and I wholly 
woke, and, roused with difficulty, doubted w^hat 
such dream, such vision might show. 



178 LOOKING IN THE GLASS. 

That is the wooing of the great god Pan. Love 
is loneHness ; the self expands to cherish all it can 
embrace, and, reflected upon its adopted mirror, it 
expands and ascends till it becomes too subtle for 
a medium, and then it is re-absorbed into the selfish, 
soulless beloved. Bah ! I gaze from a height on 
the lovely colors of sky and sea-weed till I envy the 
birds their seasick rocking in mid-air, and would 
fain dissolve into the view ; but I am sane enough 
to know that pebbles are hard, and a corpse 
devoured by crabs as unpicturesque as the public- 
houses where coroners' juries sit ; so I forbear to 
throw myself headlong. But, as I say, that is the 
wooing of the great god Pan, and it is even so the 
daughters of men are won. Who will teach them 
that lovers' hearts are harder than flinty shingle, 
and that 'twere better crabs should multiply than 
sinners ? 

I paid my farewells to this spot uninterrupted. 
It was but three weeks ere we went our several 
ways, but I felt as if something was gone to which 
I had accustomed myself. During a short visit to 

Mrs. in town, I met him again in society, 

which allowed of shorter tete-li-tetcs than West- 
ream, and I attributed to the change of circum- 
stances the fiict of his adopting a more demonstra- 
tive and less confidential manner ; and yet I never 
knew any one try to flirt with me. When I went 
home, I could not read steadily, I wrote spasmodi- 



LOOKING IN THE GLASS. 179 

cally, I dawdled away the days ; it seemed as if 
something must happen to break up my habits, and 
it was not worth while renewing them for so short 
a time. By and by he came down to our neighbor- 
hood, to see his publisher and the country, he said : 
to see me, my aunt's maid slowly and reluctantly 
began to suspect. I do believe she thinks my aunt 
and I stay single out of deference to her advice. 

The next two months were the most miserable of 
my life. There is no disguising the fact. Herbert 
and I (we learnt to use Christian names in Corn- 
wall) — Herbert and I might have loved each other 
more passionately than three-fourths of the couples 
joined together in holy matrimony ; but there was 
no laith in our love, so pride was stronger than it. 
He might have taught me to love him, I might have 
led him to wish to teach ; instead, we both felt like 
moths of one mind in view of a brilliant candle. 
In marrying me, he would have sacrificed strong 
tastes to a preference that would need explaining to 
his friends ; in marrying him, I should have made 
the sacrifice of proud self-sufiiciency which some 
women v/ill only render to Sathanas eloquent as an 
angel of light. (And only genius and dishonesty 
are eloquent, but the first is rare ; that is why good 
women mispj^ace their afiection.) 

A woman who is won before she is wooed is the 
w^orst part of a man : I did not even wish to be 
wooed. He thought me cold ; I thought him — 



l8o LOOKING IN THE GLASS. 

well, for a poet, ungenerous ; for a man, irresolute. 
Sometimes I was possessed with a nervous terror 
lest he should speak words which must put an end 
to the armed neutrality of our friendship, and yet 
I would have given worlds could we have come to 
an understanding, on points concerning which there 
was nothing to explain, even if they had admitted 
of explanation. Had we loved — for, mind you, 
we never really went as far as that — had we loved, 
we should have aime d'amou?'^ as our neighbors 
say ; but a g7'ande fassion is dangerous : fate bal- 
ances it impartially between heaven and hell, and 
chance may turn the scale either way. We were 
each jealous, not of any third person, but of the 
part of each other's mind which maintained its 
independence : we were each prudent ; he would 
not risk his material, nor I my spiritual future : we 
were each unjust in throwing on the other the 
blame of our own conduct and character : wx both, 
I think, regretted the difficulties these placed in the 
way of the harniony we both, I think, desired. 
His — what shall I call it ? It was half admiration 
and a quarter liking ; — his feelings towards me 
were manifest enough to have compromised any 
one less " serious " than myself with any one 
younger or less important than him. As it was, 
my friends — had I had any to speak of — might, on 
the face of it, have accused him of trifling with my 
feelings, had they credited me with such weak- 



LOOKING IN THE GLASS. I5I 

nesses ; yet at this moment he believes, I have no 
doubt, that it only rested with me to accept and 
recompense the homage he had not quite made up 
his mind to tender. Love bought with coquetry, 
or at least with the frank appeals of voluntary fas- 
cination, may be as deep and true as any, but the 
price put it out of my reach. Have I, then, any- 
thing to complain of or regret.^ I do neither, 
because I make a rule of not regretting what follows 
from the known and accepted nature of things. 

Yet it is certain that to part from Herbert L 

with the possibilities of our relation undeveloped 
was the first and only purel}^ personal and senti- 
mental grief I remember to have experienced. 

I had better come back to narrative. Just six 
months ago, at nine in the evening, the moon was 
beginning to shine and the air to soften after a frosty 
day. I can never resist the temptation of that 
opaque, blue brilliancy. I threw the window up 
and stepped out on the lawn, sent Willy to tell the 
elders I was gone down to the sea, and without 
waiting for remonstrances about night air or tipsy 
sailors, I jumped down the garden wall, and, hurry- 
ing over the heaps of mal-odorous debris beyond, 
soon reached the firm sand. 

Then I began to feel the silence and solitude op- 
pressive, and I walked faster and faster, as if to 
escape from it. I was horribly afraid of the dark 
as a child, and my own shadow on the broad sands 



1 83 LOOKING IN THE GLASS. 

gave me even then a kind of shiver. I felt ahuost 
as if I had escaped an enemy when I reached the 
broken rocks where I could not see it ; there was 
comfort in the fragments of sandstone, in the ivy 
hanging down to the water's edge, in the sea-weed 
reefs — in anything that shared that sweet heartless 
light. I had been striding on over the rough stones 
for perhaps ten minutes, when I heard steps and 
then his voice. He had called to bid us good-by, 
and my aunt had begged him to overtake, protect 
and bring me back ; he said nothing about the last. 
We came soon to a little shingly cove, and I sat 
down upon the pebbles still glistening in the moon- 
light from the receding tide (except clumps of 
heather there is no better couch than fine shingle) . 
He asked my leave to light a cigar, and I praised 
the fragrant fumes as I threw stones from one hand 
to the other, or into a little pool on my left. The 
wind was from the land, and by and by I heard 
eleven strike ; we rose simultaneously, and neither 
spoke till we were half-way over the reach of sand. 
Then I turned to look at the water ; little but 
foam to be seen sweeping down with the furious 
back-draught of the waves, or tossed high into the 
moonlight on rough crests shutting out the horizon. 
He asked me, I think, why I was so fond of the 
sea. I answered sleepily that I felt sorry for it ; 
the moon and the earth were tyrannical, and I 
should like the ocean with one deep sigh to find its 



LOOKING IN THE GLASS. 183 

level over all, and then its labored breathing would 
not seem so painful to me. Then another silence. 
As we neared the house he said, " I think I shall 
join that tour, Hester." 

/.* " They have an attractive programme." 

He: "Yes: a three years' absence from Eng- 
land." 

/.• '• One place is very like another." 

He : '' And one woman ? " 

/: ""No; there is a difference amongst them: 
some 'are handsome and some plain; all strange 
countries have their beauties." 

I/e : '• I did not mean physically ; some women 
have a husband, and some a cat, — or a mastiff. 
Could you ever care for any one besides Mephisto 
and your aunt? " 

/.' " What would the former say .^ 

Es steht mir an der Stirn, geschrieben, 
Dass ich nicht mag eine Seele lieben." 

We had reached the garden gate. 

//e: "Well, I shall write to you if anything 
amusing happens to us." 

/; " Thanks ; you reckon to be back in time for 
the next general election ? " 

I/e: "Yes; my mother will have found out by 
then whom she wants me to marry, and I shall have 
done writing lyrics on the impossible." 

We had answered each other at cross purposes 



184 LOOKING IN THE GLASS. 

before, but this was the last time ; next morning he 
started for Constantinople. Impossible ! . . . . 

Was ever anything impossible to an unscrupulous 
woman ? Whose fault was it ? Why should I think 
that any one was in fault at all ? All that I am I 
have myself to thank for, and I will not be ungrate- 
ful. Not the wealth of the Rothschilds nor the 
aflection of Paul and Virginia ^vould ever have 
made a happy woman of me ; yet I, who think 
mj'self wiser than most, need surely not be less 
contented than the many. The story is really this : 
In love w^ith love, I could not love him ; in love 
with loving, I cursed the truth as I felt it. In good 
sooth I think it was a curse, a visitation of indig- 
nant Providence. If I did not love God whom I 
had not seen, how could I love my brother whom 
I had seen, p?ir troppo? Was I, who had nearly 
reached, and that unwoundcd, the point of resigned 
and candid serenity, beyond which, let the Utilita- 
rians say what they will, evil is tolerable and good 
on the whole indifferent, — was I, who had done 
with the troubles of life, who seemed to have half 
done with life itself, — v^as I of my ow^n accord to 
enter upon a triple ab^'ss of living, to undertake 
responsibilities heavier than the heaviest I had ever 
made a conscience of evading, to trust myself on a 
wdiirlpool of wish-breeding action, to have two 
bodies and one spirit — careful and troubled about 
many things.'' . . . The woes of a married woman 



LOOKING IN THE GLASS. . 1S5 

have a name and a contemptible body apiece : th'ey 
are servants, or scarlatina, or whist parties, or a 
stationary income ; but these arc finite, if not tol- 
erable. If tolerable, how infinitely vast is the 
vague malaise of the maiden wiio, clothed with 
ashes and feeding upon dust, dares not even trust 
the evidence of her senses that such is the universal 
food of the rebellious sons of God, wdio close their 
eyes to His mercies lest they should be blinded by 
the dust and ashes, in which, even to the elect, it 
does seem to me, the mercies come enveloped ! 

Ah ! well, love is an affair of confused ideas, as 
Spinoza would say, and mine are clear enough and 
to spare. At least I am no Narcissus ; there is 
nothing so hopelessly unamiable as a malapropos 
clearness of vision. And now to sleep : thank 
somebodv I I never dream . . . but I am so very 
wide aw'ake ! Here is another erotic antinomy. 
Love is a passion, self-impelling towards the be- 
loved object, but it asks for reci^Drocity, and if the 
two subject-objects rush with equal force each to 
other's embrace — why, you have a deadlock, fol- 
lowed, if I have not forgotten my mechanics, by a 
rebound. Conclusion : a perfect love-match is hu- 
manly impossible ; the practical compromise in use 
waives the reciprocity ; one loves, the other is be- 
.loved ; the issue for one party, any way, either 
tragic or effeminate ; in no case beautiful : — that is 
why we deify courtship, where love is not yet shut 



1 86 . LOOKING IN THE GLASS. 

out from the possibility of return by the acceptance 
which stifles or stai-\'-es it. 

He wrote to me once, about three months later, 
with kind friendliness, after my aunt's death, asking 
my plans and urging the acceptance of his sister's 
invitation to spend the winter in Italy with her 
daughters. I wrote half-a-dozen answers, all de- 
scribing my proposed plans in terms all equally 
well-adapted to distress and scandalize him, but on 
reflection I sent none of them, and tried to think 
that a message through his sister and another through 
his nieces would serve every purpose of courtesy. 
I suppose it was schoolgirlish to take refuge in 
silence, but an intellectual flirtation seems to me 
the inanest of any. I dislike play-acting my life. 
In all contingencies the easiest course is to do noth- 
ing — but grumble at the nothingness of life, when 
eX nihilo^ nihil Jit, 



Jftttte nnh. %rhnhs\l^. 



Ask the same for me, for friends should have all things in common. 

— Plato. 



VIII. 

IT is a mistake to say that marriage spoils friend- 
ship. Few of my best friends have been singly 
blessed. If your friend has a soul large enough to 
love wisely and supremely well, w^iatever enriches 
his life and adds to his happiness will enrich his 
capacity for friendship and add to your delight in 
his society. It is a poor soul that can only love one 
at a time.^ If you lose your friend by marriage, of 
two things, one : either he was not much loss, or 
you are not. I think very often wdien people osten- 
tatiously proclaim that they will withdraw from an 
old intimacy because their intimate has got a wife, 
they have an unconscious dread of showing their 
souls in the undress of friendship to an unbiassed 
eye. It is a test, and a severe one, of mutu.al love, 
and more rare mutual respect, when the two who 
are as one have nothing between them that an old 
friend cannot wholly love ; and not less so for the 
friend who comes en tiers^ to ask nothing from 
either that he dares not ask from both. But if this 
double difficulty can be overcome, a more than 
commonly precious friendship survives. The pe- 



190 LOVE AND FRIENDSHIP. 

culiar fragrance of a love a deux can only be en- 
joyed by those who have passed master in the art 
of loving, and the rarity of these, not the selfish- 
ness of happy love, is the cause of* the common error 
that marriage and old friendship are incompatible 
goods. 

I was staying with two old and married friends in 
Brittany. The so-called chateau is half a farm, the 
buildings more like a farmhouse than most English 
manors, but all unspoilt by modernization. I am 
thinking of a May morning, when the roses hid the 
tangled bushes with pink and white cushions of 
sweet bloom that seemed to lose their beauty in 
sheer abundance ; the path, down an avenue of 
overarching roses, was strewn with fallen pink- 
white rose-leaves, just flecked with blood-red dam- 
ask petals ; the air was still with heat ; but Madame 

V , who is a very salamander, called me to 

attend her on her rounds. The white hens were 
fed, the new calf talked to, and the gardener ad- 
monished about the price of butter. It was refresh- 
ing to see how cool and happy Madame looked in 
her quaint j^rint dress, w^ith a huge parasol of the 
same color shielding her stately head and the fine 
benignant face, of Vv^iich the two chief beauties were 
two bright brown eyes and a crown of silver waving 
hair. With her white hair she looked, as she was, 
between fifty and sixty, and very beautiful ; without 
it she would have looked thirty, and handsome. 



LOVE AND FRIENDSHIP. 191 

In watching her I forgot the heat, and was led 
wiUingly through garden, yard and orchard, to the 
steps by the old fishpond. From a sort of grass 
landing there start two flights of wide, shallow, 
stone steps, gray with age, and making room here 
and there in their cracks for a little pink or yellow 
stonccrop ; in their deserted massiveness they 
seemed fit for the approach to some palace of 
sleeping beauty. Madame ascended leisurely ; I 
followed, listening to her fluent, humorous chat 
concerning all the neighbors, in whose private af- 
fairs I was kept diligently posted up from year to 
year. 

Bees and butterflies filled the air with a cheerful 
humming brightness. Without ceasing her talk, 
Madame gathered a large sweet scabious, and let 
the bloom lie loosely on her open palm. I won- 
dered what she meant to do with it, but half a 
minute later, as I looked at her again, a gorgeous 
butterfly was resting on the flower, sucking its 
sweetness, and then, yes, actually walking about 
upon the lady's hand ; the little palm was white 
and pink, like one of the blush roses climbing up 
the parapet ; but when I gathered one and held it 
alongside, the butterfly flew ofl' untempted. 

A narrow grass terrace, planted vyith cherry-trees, 
lay at the top of the steps, and on reaching it one 
saw that the steps only led up a mound, an embank- 
ment, enclosing the oblong fish-tank, where perch 



192 LOVE AND FRIENDSHIP. 

and eels were still to be caught by those who loved 
such modest sport. There is something strangely 
reposeful in the prim squareness of this old-fash- 
ioned gardening ; perhaps it comes from the sug- 
gestion of orderly abundance, where every flower 
and fruit-tree grows so freely that even when all 
rank edges are pruned off to a demure dead level, 
still the remaining square-toed shrubs, straight sen- 
tinels and pyramidical espaliers, prove to have lost 
no more than they can afford, and are still luxuriant 
with flowers, fruit and moist deep greenery. After 
all, it is half an affair of climate ; where plants can 
hardly be coaxed to grow at all, who can have the 
heart to tease them into growing tidily? But prim 
tidiness amid abundance refreshes one like a virtue ; 
it savors of antique temperance and all the homely 
graces of the golden mean. From whichever side 
one looked, the poplars and dovecote reached sym- 
metrically into the sky. 

Madame spread a shawl upon the low gray para- 
pet, and invited me to sit on the grass at her feet, 
iiud yaire 7no7i salut like a good Catholic by a full 
confession of all my sins and follies. " To begin 
with," she said, with a caressing little air that it 
was impossible to answer except just in the way 
she wanted, " why is it that you stay with us six 
weeks instead of four, and that yet you do not grow 
gayer for giving us this pleasure } " 

I said the pleasure of being with Madame was 



LOVE AND FRIENDSHIP. 193 

that she could answer as well as ask questions more 
charmingly than anybody in the world. 

"Then," she replied, "why do you not ask me 
questions?" 

Now this was exactly what, for the last fortnight 
of my stav, I had been trying to summon up cour- 
age to do. I asked, " Ought I not to have stayed 
this fortnight?" 

She said, " Elma is going to leave us this day 
week." 

I tried to put a thousand questions into my eyes, 
and as she did not speak again fell back upon an 
interrogative — " Apres ? " 

She accused me of being as unreasonable as the 
unreasonable king who wanted his dream inter- 
preted before he had told it. 

I said, " Is it not given to the best of friends to 
answer thoughts that can hardly quite be spoken? " 

Madame answered, " You are right : it would be 
wronging Elma for you to speak of her even to so 
old a friend as I am ; but though she is a sweet 
woman, to whom I would not grudge my dearest 
friend, she could not be hurt because I — To me 
you are first — before her ; and I have a right to ask 
what will be good, be best, for you, mon a7ni^ 
now ? " 

What could I say more than she knew already — 
that I wanted to know whether I might dare to 
think of marriage and speak of love to Elma. I 



194 LOVE AND FRIENDSHIP. 

had nothing to tell Madame but what she had seen 
and knew. I only knew Elma in her unapproach- 
able calm ; did she ever seek or want a friend's — 
not counsel — but sympathy at least? God forbid 
that I should ever discuss her feelings with another, 
but she owed me no such reserve ; what had she 
allowed the all-seeing Madame to divine about her 
feelings towards me ? 

Some such questions as these reached my kind 
friend's ready understanding with little help from 
words, but she hesitated to reply. 

After a pause she began : " Elma never spoke to 
me of you — she does not speak, you know, of her- 
self or feelings not of every day ; but she said to me 
som.ething that I could only think of in connection 
with you. If I tell it you, it sounds of bad augury, 
but I do not know for certain if it is bad." She 
laid her hand gently on mine and said, " One friend 
cannot always save another from the pain of this 
uncertainty. She is very proud and shy. Do not 
think me stupid because I cannot quite guess 
what, perhaps, she does not yet quite know herself. 
But I am not quite, quite sure that you would find 
her heart all ice and iron behind the wall of proud 
reserve." 

My friend was kind : I used to the uttermost a 
friend's privileged ingratitude, and gave no thanks. 
I could think only of the question, " Tell me what 
she said.^" 



LOVE AND FRIENDSHIP. 195 

Madame was pitiful, and only kept me waiting 
for one more proviso : " I tell you the saying; the 
interpretation is not yet revealed. I was speaking, 
all in the air, though I thought of more than one of 
my friends, about the sweetness of a woman's life, 
the glory of the power that comes w^hen a woman 
has but to let herself be loved, and a strong man 
grows glad to do every deed that is fair and noble 
like the lady of his love. It was all a propos of the 
age of chivalry ; if any names were mentioned, it 
was only in our thoughts " — 

" And she ? " I interrupted. 

" Let me tell you it all at length. There was a 
melancholic hero of romance, and he was pleading 
with his lady-love : was there nothing in all the 
world she wanted to have done, nothing that he 
might have the pleasure of doing for her sake — he 
asked no guerdon of love or hope ; only, if she had 
the least preference, surely she could not be vexed 
with him if he asked the little gift of le§Lve to do, 
with no other reward than that, whatever she 
might, with ever so faint a preference, choose not 
to have left undone? I defended the faint-hearted 
lover. 

" Elma spoke less tranquilly than usual. 

" ' You and these knights of yours fix on women 
an ungracious role. How if the lady's preference 
be that he should find elsewhere than in her wish 
the determining motive of his life } They profess 



196 LOVE AND FRIENDSHIP. 

modestly they ask so little : is it a small thing to be 
the mistress of a man's soul's fate? I say it is a 
tyranny to tell a woman that — whether she accepts 
it or not, whether she speaks or keeps silence, 
whether she finds her suitor a quest to follow for 
her sake, or dismisses him at once and forever — 
that the burden of his doom is on her still, and the 
responsibility of his fate lying inalienably at her 
door. If men are helpless and to be pitied, what 
else are women, I should like to know? Is it a 
man's duty, too, to lay at each woman's feet the very 
life she wishes to dispose of at her will ? We are 
all fates — and not all kind ones — to each other : 
why should women only be always called on to be 
kind ? ' 

" Elma said all this w^ith a glitter in her soft eyes, 
and a color like the faint blush of anger rising 
over neck, cheek and temples. She spoke almost 
angrily, and as if she were defending herself; and 
therefore," Madame concluded, " I said to myself, 
my friend's case is not hopeless ; people do not 
defend themselves angrily unless they suspect a 
danger. Elma has played at matronly independ- 
ence so long that she has forgotten the first condi- 
tion of that state. It is not a crime if some one 
else has been the first to think or speak of love ; but 
she has a generous nature, and it is possible that in 
her secret mind she would count it as a crime in 
herself not to have been the first to think. But I 



LOVE AND FRIENDSHIP. 197 

may be wrong, m}- friend ; ti*ust onl}^ your own 
judgment and Eima's generous soul." 

I kissed my friend's hand, and paced alone up 
and down the green alley on the three sides of the 
tank, learning by heart every feature in the prim 
picturesqueness of the back view of the chateau and 
its homely outworks. I felt chained to the spot 
where the doubtful, hopeful, most doubtful oracle 
was spoken. In youth one does not hesitate about 
trying for the good one wishes for ; if I hesitated 
now, it was not because the wishes were less strong, 
but as men grow older, one notices their caution in 
nothing more than this : they do not like any one but 
themselves to act as executioner to their own rash 
hopes. 

The hours passed unheeded overhead while I let 
every motive have its say in turn, and it was only 
Avhen rain began to fall that I noticed the change 
of temperature and an approaching storm. It was 
time to prepare for the early dinner-hour and long 
evening, ahVays pleasant, but somehow strangely 
dreaded after to-day's revelations. 

The wind had risen to a gale ; the roaring of the 
distant sea mixed with the pelting rain, and the big 
drawing-room grew chilly in the twilight. Madame 
called for logs, and presently a cheerful blaze 
crackled upon the hearth ; it was like a winter's 
evening ; the shutters were closed against the 
storm, and I felt as if six months had passed since 



198 LOVE AND FRIENDSHIP. 

the summer morning by the fishpond. The draw- 
ing-room was large, dark, and many-cornered ; the 
oak rafters in the roof added to the shade. The 
walls were tapestried, not newly, witli patched 
hangings from the bric-a-brac dealers ; the tapestry 
was worn and dim with smoke and age, but it had 
grow dim upon these walls, and the simper of the 
ladies' faces, the cabbage-roses and the spread .pea- 
cock's tail had faded into a sober harmony ; the 
pictures on the walls seemed in the firelight as if 
they had grown there, like shadows cast by a for- 
gotten world, or pictures in the living mirror of the 
Lady of Shalott. 

To know the chateau at its best you must see 
it in summer days and w^inter evenings, but only 
Madame's witchcraft could let her guests enjoy both 
between two rising suns. I said so as we four drew 
round the hearth. It was one of those old chim- 
neys in which the "ingle-nook" is not an empty 
word. As the fire blazed upon the logs, there was 
room for a ring of children to dance all round it 
safely in one of their old heatlien Christmas games. 
In w^inter the host and hostess always drew their 
arm-chairs inside the chimney, while the guests 
circled round in front. This evening the husband 
and wife sat opposite by the chimney breasts ; I 
was next to Madame, and the other lady by the 
Admiral. It is not easy to look one's next neighbor 
in the face : we both kept our eyes upon tlie fire. 



LOVE AND FRIENDSHIP. 199 

I reminded Madame of past winter evenings, and 
the strange collection of stories that were told when 
no gue^st was allowed to escape the toll. 

'•'• Let us have some stories to-night," said the 
Admiral ; " and it is Madame's turn to begin." 

The special charm of the chateau is that nothing 
ever takes our host and hostess at a loss. There is 
an answer ready for every saying, a prompt device 
for contenting each casual vv^ish. I wished this 
evening above everything to avoid the risks of con- 
versation, and I prayed that Madame would tell us 
a long, sad romance to match the wailings of the 
w^ind. 

She said: " Elma and I have been reading old 
French romances, but she grew tired of the hard- 
hearted ladies and their languishing cavaliers ; she 
would read no more, and thus she missed the story 
of the Lady of Eza and her loyal servdng-man. 
Shall I tell you that?" 

The listening trio w^ith one voice bade her tell on. 

She told us of a castle perched on a rocky peak 
by the southern sea ; the sea washed its feet on one 
side ; a torrent-bed with steep wooded sides guarded 
another, and bare rocky precipices the third ; while 
from the landward north a steep narrow stony 
track zigzagged up the least inaccessible slope of 
the hill. Long ago, when the castle was still 
famed for many gallant sieges, when Moors and 
pirates and near rivals, who coveted the strongest 



200 LOVE AND FRIENDSHIP, 

Stronghold on the coast, brought their forces in 
turn against it — in those days of long ago a fair 
maiden was left sole heiress of the famous keep, 
and her youth was beset with stormy wooings, till 
in her fourteenth year a powerful Baron, with 
scarred face and an arm few cared to meet in 
battle, married her in the castle chapel, though 
'twas said he brought tlie priest to read the service 
with him, and came an uninvited, unwished guest. 

Among the men-at-arms of the castle was a found- 
ling youth, brought up in charity by the maiden's 
father — a silent, awkward youth, speaking slowly, 
and with a strange accent, as if haunted by the 
memory of his unknown parents' tongue. And 
whatsoever the lady's wish might be, he ran to do 
her will, but for the most part with a stupid haste 
that brought him little thanks. When she was a 
thoughtless child, and asked for a tame eaglet to 
play witli, or blue hepaticas to deck Our Lady's 
shrine in winter, Uc, the stranger, would dash 
through the enemies' border for the flowers, and lie 
in prison till their season was over ; or he would 
haunt the rocks for weeks and come back witli the 
screaming nesdings and a broken arm, when the 
child had forgotten her fancy. 

On this night, when the Baron craved the castle's 
hospitality, and the maiden's mother dared not re- 
fuse to let him in, the maiden whispered to her ser- 
vant, " Fly, tell my cousin Perdigon of Peglia to 



LOVE AXD FRIENDSHIP. 20I 

bring fleet horses to the road above Turbia. and 
meet me himself at the cross by the fountain at foot 
of the castle path. He must wait there till morn- 
ing, but ere midnight I must., I will, be there." 

And the sen'ing-man stole off from his watch, and 
rode and ran to the tall eyrie of Peglia, the Eza of 
the hills, where the young knight was holding revel ; 
and, pray as he would, even to the avowing that he 
bore a message from the maid of Eza, either no 
messasfe reached the knig^ht, or none was heeded in 
his revels. Next morning, indeed, he chid the lady's 
messens^er for not having- foug^ht his wav throuo^h 
the guards and forced a hearing for her words ; and 
he set forth then with horses, and rode on to the 
veiy castle gates, but maid and castle were the 
Baron's now. and the lady frowned upon her servant. 
And so. again and again the henchman risked life 
and limbs in her ser\-ice, and still her will was 
missed, or else another had the thanks. Six times, 
as boy and man, Ma, the stranger, pressed for\vard 
in her needs, and each time she bade another do her 
will. The last time the charge was to go and bring 
news of how her tnie knight fared. He was with 
the King's troops in Provence, while the Baron wore 
the cross in Palestine. The Knight Perdigon was 
slain, and the little old trooper blessed the saints 
that this time at least she had refused his sen-ice. 

Then the next year she died, and the bier was to 
be borne solemnly to lie in state in the castle chapel, 



302 LOVE AND FRIENDSHIP. 

and the chief mourners walked at the head and feet, 
bearing a massive taper. Her husband, her brother 
(by the left hand) , and her young son were there, 
and the fourth place \\3.s claimed by fierce kinsmen 
of equal degree. The Baron looked round and knit 
his brow, for the last eager claim was made by the 
twin brother of that dead cousin Perdigon, whose 
lute-twanging was all too sweet to her ears in life. 
He looked round upon the squires and stalwart men- 
at-arms, till his eye met Uc, the stranger. 

' ' How long hast thou served my lady ? " 

The wrinkled,, wooden features hardly moved, 
and a quavering voice made answer — 

" Seven times seven years," he said, " as the clock 
strikes the hour before this next midnight." 

The Baron smiled, well pleased. 

" The knave can reckon," quoth he ; " forty-nine 
years ago, as the clock struck eleven at night, my 
lady's father gave shelter to a wailing beggar's brat, 
and we have heard him tell that he hath sei"ved one 
mistress ever since, and because none have served 
her longer — nor I trow loved more loyally — do 
thou, Uc, the stranger, bear the fourth taper." 

None can say whether it was joy or fear or a 
blind awe, as of the last judgment and the open 
gates of heaven and hell, that filled the old trooper's 
silent soul. They bore his lady to the chapel, and 
the light of his taper never shook or wavered ; then 
as the priests chanted their requiem, the mourners 



LOVE AND FRIENDSHIP. 203 

knelt, two at the head of the uplifted bier, and the 
little son and the old serving-man side by side at 
the feet. The long chants were over, the curling 
incense only lingered like a cloud round the roof, 
the solemn blessing had been said, and three of the 
mourners rose, to return as they had come to the 
w^orld that she had left. But, upright with the 
taper between his hands, like an uplifted banner in 
the battle's charge, the old sei*\'ing-man knelt still ; 
they spoke to him in a whispered voice, and he 
made no sign. No one dared to touch him, and the 
little son cried out — 

" Father ! why are his eyes open when he does 
not see ? " 

The Baron said, " Let him watch by his lady to- 
night. Did I not tell you his love and sei'\'ice were 
more faithful than we all ? " 

And through the night the dead henchman knelt 
at the feet of the dead lady ; and on the morrow, 
when they raised the chapel floor, and laid her in 
the stone coffin in the vault below, the man-at- 
arms knelt still, stiff and cold as a statue of stone 
within his armor. So they closed his visor, and 
placed a cross in the clenched hands where the 
taper had burnt itself out unheeded, and left him 
kneeling in the vault at his lady's feet. And five 
centuries afterwards a skeleton in armor was found 
kneeling still, cross in hand, at the foot of the coffin 
where the Baron's bones lay at his lady's side. 



304,. LOVE AND FRIENDSHIP. 

Perhaps it was more the dim firelight and Ma- 
dame's sweet voice than the letter of the old ro- 
mance that held her hearers silent : it was a foolish 
tale to let one's self be moved by, yet I was glad 
when Elma said — 

" At least, this lady was not cruel, and the hench- 
man had his reward ; for they tell us to call no man 
fortunate or wretched until we know the manner of 
his death." 

The Admiral said it was a dismal tale, but if the 
ladies liked to cry, he would tell them another, 
wherein il y en avait de quoi. 

The Admiral's tales were seldom short, and we 
composed ourselves to listen at ease. He was telling 
about a voyage of his own to South America, and it 
was not necessary to attend closely. I looked fur- 
tively at my neighbor ; it was strange how seldom it 
seemed possible to let one's eyes rest upon her face 
for as long as it was natural to wish, and the diffi- 
culty added to the longing for the rare, sweet pleas- 
ure. I ^vatched her now ; she was listening quite 
pensively, with her eyes fixed upon a burning log, 
from which red-hot fragments kept falling upon a 
little heap of ashes, that turned from red to gray and 
white as they lay ; I might therefore look my fill. 
There was a faint far-away touch of Spanish — it 
might be Moorish — blood in her veins, and there 
was something Oriental in the softness of her large 



LOVE AND FRIENDSHIP, 205 

brown eyes, when she was looking, as now, uncon- 
cernedly into space. 

The tender sweetness of her face and movements 
when she was or felt herself alone, or alone with 
children, seemed to crystallize involuntarily into a 
dignified reserve if any other voice or eye was near. 
I do not know if it was first assumed in self-defence ; 
if so, it was a useless weapon, for that unconscious 
air of calm repose acted like a spell. She used to 
be seriously annoyed by the hosts of applicants who, 
as she travelled with her father, prayed him for 
leave to seek her hand. She was eight-and^twenty 
now ; the first year of orphanhood was nearly over ; 
but perhaps she looked older than this. A wife of 
eight-and-twenty is very young. Elma seemed to 
have attained a ripe wisdom, most unlike of all to 
those women, not quite young, who never cease to 
be called "girls" until they marry. In travelling 
abroad with her father, Elma was usually taken by 
strangers for his wife — a mistake which she did not 
correct unless obliged ; she said it saved trouble and 
made people treat her with more respect. 

Respect was the first feeling she inspired, admira- 
tion the second — and not the last! But one was 
•afraid of her still ; she had such a statuesque repose, 
such an air of asking nothing from any man, that it 
seemed in one's imagination like an insult to ofier 
her the homage on which her eyes fell only with 
calm surprise. She loved her father, old friends of 



2o6 LOVE AND FRIENDSHIP. 

his and of her youth, and all little children^ and 
she smiled on the adoration of schoolboys ; but the 
world of marriageable men seemed not to exist for 
her, or to exist as it does for a contented matron. 
It was one of her chief attractions to me that she 
seemed to possess in her own right the composure 
and content which belongs to men and women who 
have sought and found. In unattractive women the 
same indifference repels us as discourtesy ; it is a 
gratuitous incivility to refuse what we do not for a 
moment mean to ask for, but not to offer that which 
vv^e cannot but desire eagerly, seems a wise and 
sweet reserve. Anyway, a man who has waited 
till near forty without marrying, has no time to lose 
with a bride needing to put away childish things. 
The man who could win Elma would enter at once 
upon a boundless ocean of still happiness, unchang- 
ing as the gracious calm of her simplest movement. 

"Now, there are giants in Patagonia" — the 
Admiral had apparently finished his voyage, and 
there was a change in the intonation of his voice 
which roused me like a call. I began to listen, 
and as I listened, I dared not keep my eyes on 
Elma's face. 

" There are giants in Patagonia ; and in some 
regions of South America, which I should not like 
to name lest any of you should have friends within 
a thousand miles, there are sorceresses too. My 
learned friend, the Herr Doktor Liebdiinkeln, who 



LOVE AND FRIENDSHIP. 207 

is corresponding member of all the folklore societies 
of Europe, assures me that it is from this region, 
in the neighborhood of Patagonia, that all known 
versions of a widespread folk-tale are derived — 
the tale, to wit, of the giant with no heart in his 
body. 

"According to the story, ladies" (folklore is one 
of my hobbies, so the gallant Admiral did not ven- 
ture to look my way) , ' ' some princesses skilled in 
magic have the art of charming the hearts of giants 
out of their bodies. If, when this is done, the 
giant can get hold of his own heart again, and se- 
curely wrap it up in silver paper in an ivory casket, 
in a cedar box, in a golden case, in a leaden coffer, 
and then hide the coffer in a basket of flags in the 
nest of an unknown bird, in the heart of the Invisi- 
ble Tree that grows at the top of the Inaccessible 
Hills, then the giant will be quite safe, and the 
princess lives with him, and cooks his food, and 
combs his beard, and never thinks of the prince of 
her own race who is roaming the world in search 
of her. 

'' Now giants, like men and princes, are good and 
bad, and it is mostly the bad giants who have hid- 
den their hearts in the Inaccessible Hills ; so in the 
stories, when the true prince finds his way, in spite 
of dragons, ogresses and lions, to the heart of the 
Invisible Tree, and opens all the coverings, and 
squeezes the giant's heart till he dies, and the prin- 



2o8 LOVE AND FRIENDSHIP. 

cess is set free from her enchantment, no one is 
sorry for the giant. 

" But in folk-tales, as Herr Doktor Liebdiinkeln 
and our friend Willy Welshman here will tell you, 
every story is told two ways, with the lights and 
shadows changing places ; and in my true story you 
will be sorry for Eieiaio. For there is a secret that 
bad fairies tell to royal god-daughters, w^ho are 
wicked too, and this is, that if the princess who has 
charmed the giant's heart out of his body can make 
him look the other way, and snatch it from him be- 
fore he has wrapped it up in the silver paper in the 
ivory casket, in the cedar box, in the golden case, 
in the leaden coffer, or before he has hidden the 
leaden coffer in the basket of flags in the nest of the 
unknown bird, in the heart of the Invisible Tree 
that grows at the top of the Inaccessible Hills, then 
she will hold the giant's life in her hands, and in- 
stead of cooking his food and combing his beard, 
she may make the giant fetch and do whatever she 
is pleased to command him. 

"It is said that the first giant w^ho put his heart 
away in the Inaccessible Hills had great difficulty 
in finding a sorceress to help him. They all knew 
that he did not mean to let them keep it for him, 
and that he only wanted to get rid of it in order to 
be invulnerable in battle ; for, of course, when a 
giant has no heart in his body no blows can hurt or 
weapons slay him. A sword or bullet can pass 



L O VE AND FRIENDSHIP. 209 

right through where men's hearts grow and he only 
laughs — a terrible laugh, that freezes the enemy's 
blood, and sometimes kills him with terror before 
the return blow -falls. A giant with no heart in his 
body is never tired, or hungry, or disappointed ; he 
can conquer kingdoms, because he never wants 
them too much to be able to wait for the right 
moment ; and when the kingdoms are his, he gives 
them away as easily, to the first who asks him, 
because (people whisper) he ' has no heart to keep 
them.' These giants are cruel, and some people 
mistake them for vampires, because they often stab 
their victims through the heart and then pretend 
they did not know such wounds were mortal. 

" Well, after the voyage in La Belle youvence^ 
about which I was telling you, we were put ashore 
in Patagonia, and before we left the country I 
learned to know some of the giants ^vho live there, 
more particularly one of them, whose name was 
Eieiaio, and — ladies, don't be frightened — you 
may believe an old sailor when I tell you he had 
got no heart in his body. He walked about and 
was none the worse ; but the place where his heart 
had been was just a hollow cavity, quite healed and 
skinned over, so much so that he said it would be 
no use to put his heart back now — it could never 
grow again so as to live and beat inside him. 

"It is not etiquette in this country to ask a giant 
any questions about where he keeps his heart, be- 



2ia LOVE AND FRIENDSHIP. 

cause everybody knows that if the answer w^as over- 
heard by or repeated to any rash or mischievous 
persons, tliey might use the power thus given 
them to murder the confiding giant. Still even in 
Patagonia there are whispering gossips, and I soon 
found it was generally believed (and this w^as one 
reason w4iy good mothers and daughters were a lit- 
tle cool to my friend) , that instead of being safely 
stored away in the Inaccessible Hills, Eieiaio's 
heart was kept by a strange princess from the 
Lands of the Rising Sun, called the Donna Vio- 
lante. 

" She had long black hair that reached down to 
her feet, and large black eyes that sometimes flashed 
and sometimes melted, and she had tiny pearl-white 
hands and a foot so tiny, Chinese women's slippers 
were almost long enough for her to wear. Her 
dress was of soft amber silk, and black lace hung 
over her head and neck and round white arms. 
She carried a large fan of peacocks' feathers, and a 
little round white fluffy dog, both of which, it was 
said, she used in her enchantments ; and when she 
danced the Zama9ueca, the stars stood still to see 
her, and the giants' hearts leaped for joy. 

"After setting our party ashore, La Belle Jou- 
vence was to go through the Straits of Magellan, 
and take observations of the tides and currents 
about that dangerous coast. I had leave to make 
an expedition across country and rejoin the ship at 



LOVE AND FRIEND SHIP. 2 1 1 

Santiago, and Eleiaio agi-eed to accompany the ex- 
ploring party. The Inaccessible Hills were said 
by tradition to lie somewhere behind the highest 
peaks of the Andes, that would be in sight from our 
route ; and he had some thoughts of persuading 
Donna Violante to relinquish her prize and let him 
follow the custom of his fathers, and place his heart 
in safety in the nest of the unknown bird. 

"The lady dwelt in a magic palace ty a lake; 
an impenetrable hedge of aloes and cactus sur- 
rounded her magic garden, where all the gorgeous 
flowers of the tropics bloomed among delicious 
fruits from every clime. There \vas a spell upon 
the palace, forbidding any kind of human work to 
be done by its inmates ; to eat, and drink, and sleep 
and play, and sleep and play, and drink the sweet 
iced juice of the abounding fruits, and eat and sleep 
again : this was the day's business for the human 
guests ; but we could not escape the dread con- 
jecture that unearthly rites went on unseen, and 
that it was here the awful spells were worked by 
which the hearts were drawn out of the groaning 
giants' bodies. By night unearthly shrieks and 
sighs were heard — at least I thought so in my 
sleep, though by the time I had awoke these sounds 
were changed, no doubt by magic, into the twang- 
ing of a guitar outside the window, or a whispered 
duet under the magnolia boughs. And when I 
ventured to speak to Eieiaio of these sounds, he 



212 LOVE AND FRIENDSHIP. 

warned me to let no one know I heard them ; and 
he added, as if to comfort me, that though the cry 
sounded Hke a human agony, still they were uttered 
by beings whom none can force to undergo the 
pain. The giant and the sorceress must agree to- 
gether for the horrid spell to work. 

" Now, ladies, I have seen many horrid things in 
my travels ; I have seen a human body half-carvxd 
by feasting cannibals ; I have seen starved families 
lying dead by the roadside in India ; I have seen 
the dungeons of Bomba's Naples and the prisoners 
in a Russian mine ; I have seen the hideous gayety 
of drunken vice in a Parisian den ; but I never felt 
a shudder of more horrid fear than on the day when 
I found out where Eieiaio's heart was kept. 

' ' But I must tell you first about another way in 
which the giants' hearts can be kept safely. 

" If they are hidden away in the Invisible Hills, it 
is just the same as if the giant had no heart at all, it 
grows cold and hard because there is no warm blood 
to fill it ; they feel no pain or pleasure, and if they 
do good or wicked things it is without knowing 
what they are doing. But if, when the heart first 
comes out of his body, the giant can find a little 
child or a maid who has never had an evil thought, 
and gives his still warm heart to one of these to 
have and hold and cherish, it is just the same as if 
his heart were still beating and living in its proper 
place, with a happy glow all round. The little 



LOVE AND FRIENDSHIP. 213 

child or the maid who has never had an evil 
thought carries her charge about with her tenderly, 
in soft warm hands, and if she is obliged to lay it 
aside for a moment she puts it down gently, with a 
kind caress, and says to it, ' Lie still, little heart,' 
and then the heart and the giant sleep and have 
happy dreams till she comes back and bids it wake, 
and carries it again tenderly as a mother does a 
child. 

*' Now when Eieiaio gave his heart to the Senora, 
he thought she was one of those guileless maids or 
children, for she was able by her enchantments to 
make herself look young and good, half like one of 
these true guardians and half like the other, for no 
magic can quite imitate a true child and maid. But 
Eieiaio was deceived, and still when I urged him to 
break the enchantment and let me force the Senora 
to relinquish her prey, he would not quite believe 
me, and said, ' Nay, but surely she is young and 
good : she plays with my heart now — she is only 
young ; but when she has done with playing she 
will take it up again in soft gentle hunds, and 
carry it with her tenderly, and I shall live again, 
and feel it beat within me, with a happy glow all 
round.' 

" But though he said this, and by her enchant- 
ments she had power to make him almost believe 
it, I knew that he had come to the magic villa now 
in hopes of moving her to let him have his heart 



214 LOVE AND FRIENDSHIP. 

again, because of the strange fits of sickness that 
had attacked him of late. He went to English 
medicine men, and they talked about angina pec- 
toris and rheumatism of the heart : the science of 
the Old World is in its infancy, and Eieiaio did not 
dare to tell them, lest they should have thought him 
mad, that the gnawing ache which seized him could 
not come from rheumatism of the heart when his 
heart was a thousand miles away. 

" And now I must tell you how I learnt where 
the Senora really kept his heart. 

" She used to feed the little white fluffy dog, who 
was one of the instruments of her enchantment, 
with chocolate and sweetmeats, and there was an 
embroidered velvet reticule full of these dainties 
always lying about upon her sofa-table. One day 
I noticed that there were two such reticules, just 
alike, lying together. Fluff was begging, with one 
paw up, his head cocked wickedly on one side, and 
a black eye winking at his mistress. She took up 
one of the velvet bags, and carelessly, while she 
was looking the other way, seemed to feel in it for 
a bonbon. 

"Eieiaio turned pale, the veins on his forehead 
were knotted as if with pain, and I thought he was 
about to faint. I got up to go to him, but mean- 
while the color came back to his face, and I heard 
the Senora laugh, and say she had been lookingjn 
the wrong bag. 



LOVE AND FRIENDSHIP. 215 

'' The little scene made an uncomfortable im- 
pression on me, and gradually I made sure that 
Donna Violante kept the giant's heart in the second 
velvet reticule, and that when he turned pale, as if 
on the verge of death, it v^^as because she had 
tossed the reticule upon the ground for Fluff to play 
with, or was scrunching it unkindly into hidden 
corners when she wanted it to be out of the way. 

" Once I came in as Fluff was worrying the bag, 
which she pretended was the one that held the bon- 
bons, and he was to show his cleverness by untying 
the strings and getting one out for himself. Eieiaio 
was in the room as the sorceress watched this cruel 
sport, and he sat pale and silent as a ghost while the 
little fiend's paws trampled on his life. I snatched 
the bag away, and was about to give it to Eieiaio 
and make the sign of the cross, upon which, you 
know, the sorceress and all her enchantments would 
have vanished away into a shower of sulphurous 
dust. But a spell was on my friend, and with a sad 
smile he gave it back to the Senora, saying, ' Keep 
it, or give it back to me yourself.' 

" Well, this is nearly the end of the story. 
Things came to a crisis after Donna Violante was 
appealed to by another giant whose name was 
Eieiulo, to take his heart and keep it too. He had 
been caught as a young orphan by some Wesley an 
missionaries, and brought up by them in a college 
where he had learnt arithmetic ; and though he had 



2 1 6 LOVE AND FRIENDSHIP. 

escaped from them and returned to the manners and 
religion of his ancestors, still he could do simple 
sums in a way unusual among the giants ; and he 
reckoned that the Senora had only two hands, and 
that therefore she could only take charge safely of 
at most two giants' hearts at a time. 

"After the sign of the cross, there is nothing sor- 
ceresses dread so much as arithmetic ; and Donna 
Violante was very angry at being asked how many 
hearts she had in her keeping. She showed her 
empty hands, and pretended she had none, and all 
the while she had got Eieiaio's heart tucked away 
under the sofa-cushion, between a rosary and a 
French novel, and she leant her elbows on it as she 
talked, and I saw my friend writhe under the mali- 
cious digs she gave his heart as she moved lan- 
guidly from one graceful pose to another. 

"After this there was an angry scene between 
them, and at last Eieiaio uttered the fatal words, 
' Give me back my heart,' and in his anger he 
added rashly, ' and then you will have room for 
Eieiulo's if he isn't too wise to give it you.' 

" They w^ere the last words Eieiaio spoke. She 
smiled fiendishly, and opened the strings of the 
little bag and took his heart in her hand, saying, 
' When you gave it me I promised to keep it as 
long as you lived ; I will be better than my word, 
and keep it longer. I will never part with it at all ; 
its ashes will take very little room — I will wear it 



LOVE AND FRIENDSHIP, 217 

in my ring instead . of this black drop oi mortal 
poison.' She kept one hand clenched round his 
heart — Eieiaio felt his life ebbing — as she showed 
him a ring like that King Mithridates wore, and 
then she let the one black drop of mortal poison 
fall on Eieiaio's heart. 

'' The stories say that the giants fall down dead 
when their heart is killed ; but to get at the whole 
truth about these strange things you must hear the 
story from somebody who has seen what happens. 
The giants whose hearts are in the right place are 
not so much taller than ordinary men ; they only 
seem so because of their wonderful strength and 
other gifts. They can hear the grass grow, and see 
what men and women think ; they know where the 
Spice Islands are without crossing the sea, by their 
scent ; they eat the sunlight and drink the falling dew, 
they understand the language of birds and beasts, 
an4 their hands grasp tools a thousand miles away. 

" All this is changed when their heart- is killed : 
they fall into a heap that is still shaped like a dead 
man's body, and the shape moves about by cords 
and pulleys, like a frog wound up to jump ; but 
they neither see, nor hear, nor taste ; they know 
and feel and understand nothing any more, because 
their heart is killed. All this Eieiaio knew, but he 
could neither move nor speak ; the sorceress let the 
black drop fall upon his quivering heart — there 
was a sudden flash." 



2l8 LOVE AND FRIENDSHIP, 



At this moment something uncanny happened ! 
The fire was burning low, and the Admiral's voice 
was hollow, to match his grisly theme ; at this 
moment there was a flash, and a sharp explosion 
sounded. It was enough to make one believe in 
witchcraft. A piece of flaming wood had broken 
off' with a crack, and leapt, all glowing, into Elma's 
lap. I started forward to snatch it away before her 
dress was scorched, but she too started, and as I 
grasped the burning fragments in my hand, her 
hands clasped mine above it : she held them fast, 
and I thought the teai*s stood in her eyes. My 
hand felt like the giant's heart, caressed by a maid 
who has no evil thoughts. Then she recollected 
herself, and I threw the cinder back upon the 
hearth. Madame poked the logs into a blaze, and 
the Admiral said that was all the story. 

We had been married seven years before I ven- 
tured to ask Elma if she thought it was the giant's 
heart that had leapt into her lap for safety. She 
smiled then a little consciously, and for all answer 
asked, " Shall I write to Madame to expect us on 
the first of May?" 

" Yes," I said, " and the Admiral, with Elmina's 
love, to get his stories ready ; but he must never 
tell her about Eieiaio, because that made mamma 
cry once." 



^rlipf 



The sun shall be darkened, and the moon shall not give her light. 



IX. 



WHEN I was young, I had great difficulty in 
entering into the mental state of persons 
who were unhappy on account of their beliefs or 
doubts. That people should doubt and wish to be- 
lieve, or believe and hesitate as to whether they 
ought not rather to doubt, was something of a psy- 
chological mystery to me. I was myself much 
given to doubting accredited propositions, but then 
I never doubted the appropriateness of my own 
doubts, and, as an undergraduate, I earned the 
character of being, like Macaulay , enviably ' ' cock- 
sure " of all my own opinions. My mind seemed 
to be incapable of real indecision : if there were a 
subject on which I had no fixed opinion, I was pro- 
visionally confident that the materials for certainty 
vs^ere absent, and I was untroubled by the desire for 
baseless results. I felt for the victims of doubt as 
for those of any other unfortunate passion, and pit- 
ied them the more because I was not able literally 
to sympathize. But at last my own turn came, and 
a long year of indecision remains in memory as one 
blank moment of exasperating pain, associated, by 

221 



222 ECLIPSE, 

a quaint chance, with a cold spring day and an 
eclipse of the sun. 

I had left Oxford for some years, during which a 
school and college friendship with a man two or 
three years my senior had continued to grow in 
strength and intimacy. At the time I speak of he 
had made a good start at the bar, and was engaged 
to be married. I had a fellowship, wrote occasion- 
ally for the papers, and nursed a secret resentment 
against fate for not having planted me in surround- 
ings which would have allowed my young wisdom 
to contribute to the councils of the nation, without 
the double difficulty of earning money enough to 
contest a borough, and popularity enough of the 
platform sort to do so successfully. The only strong 
natural appetite w^ith which I was troubled, was a 
taste for holding the reins, and feeling the congrega- 
tion of my fellows answer to the guiding hand upon 
their necks. I hadn't any exaggerated ideas of 
parliamentary importance, but I felt that it would 
have suited me to be an hereditary legislator, while 
it didn't suit me at all to be a candidate for popular 
favor, as if I had wanted power for personal reasons 
of my own. Besides, I foresaw that when the 
struggle for place or power is long and hard, almost 
inevitably the nearer end becomes substituted for the 
true and remote aim, so that one risks beginning the 
real struggle lamed in one's best limbs and forgetful 
of the chief reward. 



ECLIPSE. 223 

Hence it was with a rather sulky sense of renun- 
ciation that I held back on the occasions when 
ardent youth is wont to bray disinterestedly in ac- 
companiment of political conflicts or advance. I 
could not have what I wanted on my own terms, 
and I was not inclined to put up with makeshifts. 
Very likely there was a sub-conscious hope or ex- 
pectation that my retiring merits would be dragged 
to the light by others, and influence attained at once 
witliout the struggles of competitive self-assertion ; 
and as this was far from befalling, naturally the 
haunting consciousness of deprivation remained the 
same. I acknowledged the unreasonableness of my 
discontent, but the fact remained, to the disgrace of* 
my philosophy, that I was both discontented and 
unreasonable. Stray bits of more or less desirable 
work that came in my way were not neglected, but 
on the whole I was idle, uncomfortably idle as well 
as uncomfortably ambitious. 

After a while it struck me that I was playing a 
childish part ; it was true fate had not cast me for 
the role of hero that I aias so assured of playing 
best, but it was a confession of imbecility to give up 
in consequence the attempt to play any part at all. 
The Laureate had written that "'Man is man and 
master of his fate," and it was one of the things I 
had been wont to feel "cock-surest" of, that the 
man who could only do his best by the help of For- 
tune's favors had a screw^ loose somewhere in the 



224 ECLIPSE. 

knitting together of his mental system. Fortune 
aiding, middle-sized folk might play a conspicuous 
part, but what young man ever cared, in the secret 
recesses of his soul, for a mediocre celebrity ? True 
greatness would be its own circumstances. 

In the absence of peremptorily determining mo- 
tives, I was only too free to choose a career, and, as 
a first step towards the candid consideration of alter- 
natives, I thought I would have a talk with my 
thriving j^ractical friend. We were both going up 
to Oxford for a college meeting — his last, as he was 
to be married in a month or two. The morning 
after our arrival we started for an early walk ; an 
eclipse of the sun was to come off, and we agreed to 
see the end of it from Headington Hill rather than 
be bothered with science and petticoats at the Ob- 
sei*vatory. 

I wonder why romance still keeps its hold upon 
the phenomena of sunrise and sunset, whilst eclipses 
are altogether given up to astronomers and smoked 
glass ; not so much as an old woman deigns to be 
awed by them. Either \m^ more superstitious than 
the general, or I was strangely affected by a mere 
coincidence ; any way the overcasting of my life 
seemed always afterwards to date from the strange 
chill darkness of that morning's eclipse. The sun 
was high up in the heavens as we started, and still 
so brilliant that the naked eye could hardly be said 
to perceive any lessening of the radiant orb ; but a 



ECLIPSE. 225 

more than wintry dulness was upon the landscape, 
the blue of the sky to the w^est and north was colder 
than any gray, and the towers and spires of the 
ancient city had a spectral air of stillness. 

My friend — I will call him Anson — responded 
readily to my hint that I wanted to talk about plans 
and prospects of my own. This was nothing new 
between us ; he had before now taken much trouble 
to induce me to stand for a certain professorship, 
and I had followed with at least equal interest the 
story of his briefs and his courtship. We should 
each have been equally ready to claim from the 
other such services as pass current in fraternal 
friendship, equally ready to rely with cheerful 
confidence on the gratitude of whichever had the 
luck to play benefactor for the nonce. But this 
time I wanted Anson not so much to help as to 
advise, and with this intent I thought it needful to 
put him in possession of all the circumstances. 
Now to me the first essential circumstance to take 
as a starting-point was the underlying feeling that 
fate was against me, and that, in common wisdom, 
I had to put behind me all tempting dreams of ideal 
achievements. Anson received all this very impa- 
tiently. I could hardly tell from his abrupt protests 
whether he thought that it was not true or that it 
did not signify. He was quite sure it was irrele- 
vant. Had I no positive, definite tastes or wishes? 
A man must have some life and purpose of his 



226 ECLIPSE, 

own ; let me say what I wanted to be at, and he 
would know how to advise, sympathize, or dis- 
suade. I said, " Don't think of it as my difficulty 
only. I represent some thousands of living agents, 
free to choose for themselves what it is best for 
them to do ; special, accidental determination is 
wanting, and surely that is no loss, seeing how 
often accidental ties hinder the individual from do- 
ing what could be best for himself and others. Is 
there nothing of which we can say, ' This is best in 
the abstract, and to be preferred, therefore, if cir- 
cumstances grant us the luxury of choice ' .^ " 

The shadows of the willows across the stream 
were growing paler as we spoke ; suddenly they 
vanished, but not as indicating the height of the 
eclipse ; a column of fleecy cloud had risen from 
the east, and now began to cross the sun. In five 
minutes the zenith was overcast, and a darkness 
like that of early sunrise fell upon our path. As 
we turned into the highroad and began to ascend 
the hill, a sort of constrained silence fell upon us. 
The sun had now lost its dignity as well as its 
power ; the filmy mist showed as plainly as a piece 
of colored glass the long crescent shape of divinity 
under a cloud, the silver arc slid like the moon be- 
tween the drifts of brown vapor that seemed to hang 
half-way between the earth and the round masses 
of soft gray cloud which melted into white as they 
neared the sun. Body and mind shivered together. 



ECLIPSE. 227 

I hardly know how much of the pros and cons 
that haunted my mind afterwards were explicitly 
discussed between us then : the very fact that I had 
looked foi-ward to this conversation as a starting- 
point for more hopeful action made the chill of dis- 
couragement more crushingly complete, and I felt 
an insane readiness to take the innocent eclipse for 
an omen. I know I argued that it was absurd, in 
the face of the countless failures in each generation, 
to assume at starting that one's own life had a right 
to count upon success, and if not, was it anything 
but a folly to start burdened with hopes that were 
only so many empty packing-cases to hold the com- 
ing load of disappointment? On the other hand, if 
I put myself out of court altogether, and resolved to 
work only for my fellow-citizens, according to the 
cynic, " On a toujours assez de force pour sup- 
porter les malheurs d'autrui," and the probable dis- 
appointments met with here should be endurable ; 
I admitted this would be an ungenerous calculation 
if it constituted one's real, sole motive ; but Anson 
called himself a utilitarian, and I thought it was a 
valid argument that the greatest happiness of the 
greatest number must fare best if the greatest num- 
ber adopt it consciously as the goal of their several 
efforts, instead of aiming only at their own happi- 
ness, which we know beforehand so many of them 
will miss. 

But he would not have it so. Leaving my argu- 



228 ECLIPSE. 

ment on one side, he insisted that I took an un- 
healthy and distorted view ; whether the end pur- 
sued was one's own good or that of somebody else, 
the only sane and natural state was one of keen 
personal desire, an appetite for that particular good 
too real to be argued out of existence by the 
thought of its possible non-indulgence. I said that 
too is a form of happiness, to have before one the 
clear vision of a good attainable through one's own 
action, whether for one's self or another ; but such 
blessings are rare. What right has one to claim or 
count upon such fortune for one's self.^ And I 
remembered, though I did not say, how in all dab- 
bling with small social reforms I had felt the neces- 
sity of choking off one's inborn hopefulness and 
forcing one's self into content so long as action 
seemed to be going the right way, though the end 
of it was still hopelessly out of sight. And now the 
friend I loved and trusted, whose practical judg- 
ment of life and character had always seemed riper 
and wiser than mine, this friend takes the painful 
conclusions of my best wisdom and intentions and 
imputes them to me for sin or feebleness. 

Meanwhile the sunlight was growing fainter, and 
the clouds seemed to spread into a thin smooth 
mist, which in its turn melted into space, and the 
blue-gray sky was clear again. We leant upon the 
top of a five-barred gate and looked back down 
upon the valley of the Isis. The whole plain was lost 



ECLIPSE. 229 

in silvery mist, a gray cloud hung heavily over 
Oxford, and the only spot of light in the view was 
far off where a gleam of sunlight caught the passing 
smoke of the up express, just as sometimes, when 
the sky is almost wholly overcast at sea, one thin 
streak of red or yellow light glitters through the 
shadow midway to the horizon. I looked dreamily 
from the spray of flowering blackthorn that bent 
over the gate post to the dim wide prospect, and it 
seemed as if the living world was a very long way 
ofl'. I do not know how long we stood in silence ; 
it was one of those moments that seem as if they 
might last for ever without change, and then 
Anson's voice was heard, even and unimpassioned, 
as if still in the middle of a sentence : " The fact is, 
you ought to marry ; it's exasperating to see a 
fellow ^vith your sense wriggling like a contrary eel. 
Fall in love with a nice girl, and either take to a 
jDrofession or write a book. Go into society, make 
friends, forget yourself and those nightmares about 
fated disappointment. Do what w^ork you can ; 
don't be always hanging back with some sickly 
apology that perhaps somebody else would do it 
better ; and, for heaven's sake, don't think there is 
any saintly virtue in never doing anything you 
like ! " 

There is no describing the whirl of bewilderment 
that fills a single moment, when one feels a thou- 
sand things at once, and each several shock com- 



230 ECLIPSE. 

bines with the others to swamp one's consciousness 
with a single comprehensive, overwhehning thrill 
of startled pain. Had I said something quite dif- 
ferent from what I meant, or was he answering 
something quite different from what I had said? 
I kept silence and looked up. Did I say that the 
eclipse was annular.? Overhead was to be seen a 
black ball with a silver line outside it, like a celes- 
tial bull's eye. I laughed aloud. It seemed an 
absurd mockery of human aspiration that Phoebus 
Apollo should glower at us with one blind eye at 
the moment when any hint or glimpse of light or 
mercy would have seemed, indeed, an oracle from 
heaven. Anson thought for a moment I was 
laughing at his advice ; but when he, too, looked 
up, he owned that the awe of impending darkness 
was over. We gave one look round, shivered, 
came back to the road, and in easy talk of college 
matters strode homewards down the hill. 

There are mistiikes one does not make twice ; 
but just because I was not going to risk my pleasant 
friendship on the rocks of quasi-theological debate, 
I felt inwardly the more bound not to disregard the 
chance of undiscerned truth lurking in what seemed 
to me the unsympathetic and superficial Weltan- 
schauimg thrust in my face by this unlosable 
friend. My thoughts dwelt on every word he had 
said, on every half-meaning I could imagine latent 
in his unspoken thoughts. Instead of dwelling on 



ECLIPSE. 231 

the materials for self-justification, I turned advocate 
on the other side ; it seemed so much better that I 
fihould have been egotistically stupid than that he 
should have failed in understanding kindness. 

I say I have no divine right to a likable function 
in life ; he says it is a disease of body or mind if 
one does not like the function ^vhich it is objectively 
best for one to discharge. But can there be a duty 
in liking? Is it possible that one's chance of doing 
a plain duty should hinge upon the luck v*^hich 
makes the accessible duties pleasant ? And yet it is 
true also, as he contends, that there is virtue in the 
joyous fulness of objective life to feed the powers 
bv which men do their best for the world. Week 
after week, month after month came and went, 
leavino^ me revolvino^ in the same vicious circle of 
recurring moods, all colored by the same sense of 
emptiness and discouragement. Though I refused 
to complain of the need or abandon the attempt to 
endure to the end, to my feeling it ivas endurance, 
a prospect at which to set one's teeth and stiffen the 
muscles in stern preparation ; and then I felt that 
such a mood, indeed, could not invite the tender 
sympathies of friendship. Is Anson himself nothing 
to me, that I should din into his ears the complaint 
that my life is all endurance, all hardship, that one 
can no more than endure .^ Why cannot I escape 
from the cramping sense of endurance and begin to 
achieve '^. 



232 ECLIPSE. 

He does not understand that one should do any 
kind of uncongenial work for the benefit of others 
without the stimulus of sympathetic affection or 
personal desire. He calls it insanity to act without 
either love or liking, liking for the mere act or 
good-will towards the object. I say, God help the 
world if none can serve but those who love it ! — 
and all the while I know that the intelligent accept- 
ance of a rule is but a feeble motive in comparison 
with the spur of personal affection. The intention 
to do one's duty to one's neighbor is too wide ; one 
must want to render concrete sei^vices to A and B. 
Victor Hugo's epigram on Cimourdain will bear 
extension : " On lui avait refuse une femme, il avait 
epouse I'humanite. Cette flenitude eno7'me c'est 
ati fond le videy 

I go over without bitterness all the common-sense 
reasons against my life (or yours) laying itself out 
on an exactly ideal plan. I am incapable of the 
half-mystical " trust that somehow good" will come 
to save one's soul without ^vorks or grace of one's 
own. Content is a subjective feeling, and may come 
either after victory or defeat, but not while the issue 
is uncertain, or, as is more often the case in peace= 
ful daily life, when some of the possible issues are 
still regarded as evil, without therefore being the 
less likely to occur. My experience is all against 
any "unearned increment" of virtuous power, 
while Anson argues that the Methodistical doctrine 



ECLIPSE. 233 

of " leadings " rests upon a sound induction. It is 
the inward imj^ulse to seize a given opportunity 
which inspires action and gives to the result its 
providential character. But the question is this : 
every one has opportunities of acting somehow, 
and may use these opportunities better or worse ; 
but is it certain that every one can have a selfish 
liking for the best actually in their reach? are 
opportunities certain to offer of themselves for the 
individual to do the best he can ? or may it not rest 
with the judgment to inspire the initiative effort in 
the silence of congenial impulses? 

If one aims at doing what one conceives to be 
right, is.it any use torturing one's self about what 
one does or doesn't feel, like so many unconverted 
Evangelicals? I don't care, and don't want to care, 
for any of the goods of life ; by nature I cared for 
very few, which I couldn't have, and after arguing 
myself out of the desire for what I used to want (in 
vain), I would rather not, even if I could, fall again 
under the sway of self-regarding wishes, running 
the same chances of distracting disappointment and 
stupefying indulgence. I should wish to be content 
to have no life of my own, to exist as an atom in 
the social machine, working without hunger or 
thirst, consuming nothing, and following without 
will of its own the " leadings " of adjacent springs. 
But if I lived forever, as, praised be the solar 
system ! is not dangerous, I should have no selfish 



234 ECLIPSE, 

delight in the function, for my inmost nature recoils 
from the invitation to be glad that other people care 
for such lives as would be hateful or intolerable 
cO me. My friend says (and w^ith some reluctance I 
believe him to be right), that one cannot discharge 
even the most mechanical function in the social 
body unless one feels with the impulses that direct 
the living atoms. And I do not feel with them, 
even when I feel very heartily ^cr them. I cannot 
feel for myself as they do ; I cannot wish so to feel, 
and though I could give almost my hopes of death 
to have an ideal towards which it was possible to 
strive, the best possible to me is not an ideal, but a 
calm, solitary stoicism, to which he gives much 
harder names. 

It is human fate to have to struggle after some- 
thing better than one is ; but merely to wrangle 
with one's self for not being already other, seems 
a waste of force ; and yet I wrangle and for the first 
time in my life doubt and dispute my own strongest 
mental instincts, because I cannot rest content with- 
out an ideal aim, safe from the blight of my friend's 
contempt. 

The fact is, though I love my fellow-creatures 
dearly in the abstract, all concrete relations with 
them are so complicated with depressing difficulty, 
that I can hardly keep myself from feeling as if 
I disliked the relations. I never come in contact 
with people without wanting to act on them or 



ECLIPSE. 235 

their circumstances ; but perhaps they don't want 
to be acted on, or they want to act on me, or want 
X and J' to act with or on them in quite a different 
direction. On the whole, I believe most of the 
things that I feel inclined to do might as well be 
done as let alone. I am sure I had better do some 
of them than nothing ; but unless one is quite sure 
that the very thing one wishes to do one's self wants 
doing more than any other possible thing, one is 
apt to wait for encouragement or sympathy before 
one begins ; and then again there is always a likely 
chance that tlie thing one is encouraged to do, if 
one meets with any encouragement at all, is the 
third best of the whole lot. And then one drifts 
back upon the knowledge — none the less certainly 
true because it is a sentence of death for such as I 
— that no particular good thing will be done by any 
one who has not a personal selfish desire prompting 
him to do just that. I have wasted the strength of 
my life in always trying to do some unprofitably 
distasteful thing. All my days have been spent in 
doing or trying to resolve to do what I disliked, and 
Anson seemed to make himself the mouthpiece of 
the world's unkindness in giving a verdict against 
me on this very ground. Not that I appeal against 
its justice. Where is the merit of a martyrdom 
that serves no creed.? With chances to favor, I 
might have done something — it is useless to 
wonder how much or little — but that asrain was 



236 ECLIPSE. 

what I bated to admit, that one's fate was in the 
hands of chance. 

But I hated, too, the misplaced sympath}' which 
congratulates you pleasantly on the pleasantness of 
an irksome task, and is ready to encourage your 
despair by auguries of undesired rewards and un- 
attainable results. There is nothing more madden- 
ingly discouraging than the suggestion of a friend, 
who, ignoring the impalpable sources of one's dis- 
tress, points to imaginary prizes in the coming 
years : an author's fame, a happy marriage, or the 
like. If friendship's self can only hope to make 
the present bearable by the prospect of a future 
that will never be, that is a confession that the 
present is unbearable, not a help in bearing it. As 
a mere boy, I had hailed as deliverance the doctrine 
that it is wise and right to renounce, not to set 
one's heart on pleasure ; it is a small thing as well 
as unattainable, — strength and virtue lie in being: 
able to do without it. And so I lived, asking 
nothing, and not complaining when I got it. But 
this philosophy does not teach one what to do ; and 
while I told myself and believed it was right to be 
able to do w^ithout pleasure, I did not think and feel 
it to be right or possible to do without action. And 
I sought the inspiration of friendship to tell me how- 
to act. My friend answered, or so his words 
sounded to my soul's ears, " Act as you like, and 
like what other people do ; " or perhaps it was, 



ECLIPSE. 237 

" Like what other people do, and then you will act 
with them of j^our own accord ; " anyway, trans- 
lated into doctrine, the conclusion seemed to be 
that virtuous action was the natural fruit of un- 
bought involuntary happiness, and that no good 
thing came from any other root. And I understood 
how people have called Calvinism, a damnable 
creed ; for by that, as by this, we are shown men 
and women, as it were alive, but a doom not of 
their own making holds them back from living 
rightly. That this was horrible gave no assurance 
that it should not be true, but if true it was a 
damnable, a damning truth. It seemed to be a 
light thing to give up happiness, but I did not 
care to give up my conscience too. Had onl}^ the 
fortunate a right to be good? was I to renounce 
the first fruits of my life's stern teaching and learn 
to wait upon Providence for luck that should in- 
spire me with virtuous power.? 

I knew Anson did not argue thus, but where else 
was his reasoning to lead } I have two exorbitant 
appetites — to rule the wide world beneficently, and 
to have all my friends' best love. I feel the mon- 
strousness of these pretensions, but if I choose to 
accept all or nothing, who has a right to blame my 
choice? We have each a double ideal. There is 
the self that one would have liked to be, and the 
self that one feels one might and ought to become. 
I would have triumphed if I could in and over the 



238 ECLIPSE. 

world by nature ; if that is denied me, shall I not 
triumph by grace over my own regret? 

In point of orthodoxy there was little to choose 
between us; Anson swore by "Evolution," and I 
by a philosophy of my own, as yet imperfectly 
evolved ; but the difference between us seems almost 
theological in character ; so might a Calvinist and 
a Utilitarian Pelagian debate as to the duties of the 
unconverted. But Anson, when I hinted at the 
parallel, only accepted half of it. 

" Exactly ; there's an ascetic twist, as if one of 
your great-grandfathers had been a Trappist monk. 
What other good is there on earth but natural 
earthly happiness, and what have positive philoso- 
phers like you and me to do w4th transcendental vis- 
ions of some hyper-sensible state of ' blessedness,' 
which, if you analyze it, must turn out a pure sur- 
vival from states of thought which owed all their 
meaning to theological preconceptions that you ac- 
cept as little as I do ! " 

Well, I had no special preference for the word 
"blessedness," but I thought Anson and his favorite 
philosopher rather missed sight of the motives which 
have led to the revival of its use by some fairly 
" positive " moralizers. Let us take some moment 
of extreme personal happiness. A long-sought-for 
discovery has been made, merit long denied has met 
with public recognition, a rival has been ignomini- 
ously defeated, a risky speculation has turned out 



ECLIPSE. 239 

fortunately, a beloved bride has been won. Now in 
all these cases the feeling of personal delight may 
be equally intense, but a moralist, while admitting 
all alike to be happy after their own fashion, would 
only affirm those to be possessed of " true blessed- 
ness " whose happiness was compatible with the true 
good and gladness of others. Supposing the bride's 
consent has been extorted by domestic coercion, 
supposing the speculation to have succeeded by the 
ruin of honest traders, supposing the rival to have 
felt no evil passions, and to be pained and injured 
by his defeat, suppose the acknowledged merit to be 
spurious, and the imagined discovery an hallucina- 
tion, the happiness remains the same at the moment, 
and in the worst cases there is least danger of its 
being cut short. But this is not blessedness. You 
may call it good luck if you think it such, but if 
there is any highest wisdom at all, any immaterial 
prize of righteousness, it must be something inde- 
pendent of good and evil chances, something that 
a man may conquer for himself out of the deepest 
abysses of calamitv. If there is a supreme, iinper- 
sonal divinity of right, if a man is in love -\n\\\\ this 
divinity, and has vowed himself body and soul to 
its service, he mav find in faithfulness to this his own 
ideal vision a source of satisfaction potent to out- 
weigh even an acute sense of personal suffering, so 
that the righteous man may choose, and choose 
happily, his own pain rather than the surrender of a 



240 ECLIPSE. 

wider good. Even of the elements of what we call 
personal happiness, many are external to ourselves, 
confer on us no direct pleasure or advantage, and it 
is only going a step further in the same direction to 
admit that under some circumstances the conscious- 
ness may prove to be most satisfactorily occupied 
with experiences that are in no sense self-regarding. 
It is a commonplace almost beyond dispute that 
men may sometimes be called upon to renounce 
their happiness if they would keep their hold on 
the eternal good ; but it seems to me that there is 
yet a further step, and none but religious ascetics 
have dared to take it. I say we are called upon to 
recognize that the answer of a good conscience, the 
" blessedness " or content born of complete devotion 
to the highest Best, may prove to be as little in our 
reach as the ordinary good luck of earthly fortune. 
Any life would be worth living that could be spent 
in the service of the ideal best ; but what if for some 
of us, for me myself, no ideal was possible or con- 
ceivable ? 

By the time I had got the problem clearly stated 
on this wise, I ceased to wonder that Anson had 
failed so much as to understand its terms, let alone 
the formula for its solution. And yet if there is no 
such fate, what did the old monk mean ? " Magnum 
est et valde magnum, tam humano quam divine 
posse carere solatio, et pro amore Dei libenter ex- 
ilium cordis velle sustinere, et in nullo se ipsum 



ECLIPSE. 241 

quaerere, nee ad proprium meritum respicere." 
To live for the love of good, cut off from all living, 
loving goodness, alike of gods or men, if there w^ere 
no such damnation as this, why did the Apostle of 
the Gentiles challenge the doom as what he would 
risk to save his brethren's souls ! But this is still to 
the Jews a stumbling-block, to the Greeks foolishness. 

Anson was to have been married in May, and we 
did not meet again till the following autumn. The 
wedding had been put off on account of illness in 
the bride's family, and he had been spending all his 
spare time with them, so pretexts had not been 
wanting to help the postponement of an encounter 
that I dreaded. We met at last in an out-of-the- 
way court off the Strand, at a workingmen's meet- 
ing called to discuss an inconvenient technical con- 
sequence of some recent attempt at law reform. I 
was presiding, and had just finished a short intro- 
ductory statement when Anson came in. 

I asked him if he, as one " learned in the law," 
would speak next. 

He said, " Presently ; " and when the next orator 
was well started on an eloquent, unaspirated ha- 
rangue, he whispered to me his congratulations on 
the part I was taking in this affair, and in one or 
others of the same inconspicuous sort ; and added 
what was meant for an apology, " Afraid I was 
awfully uncivil to you in the spring, but it made me 
savage to see a fellow like you wasting his time 



242 ECLIPSE, 

and spirits over cobwebs. More glad than anything 
to see 3'Ou're all right now." 

I laughed, and asked if it was a psychological 
axiom that a " chairman" never suffered from reli- 
gious difficulties, and he took the query to be a jest. 
I did not think it necessary to explain that when I 
was first asked to preside at this meeting, I refused 
and suggested the name of a rising M.P., and that 
it was only at the eleventh hour, when the latter 
telegraphed an excuse, that I consented to take his 
place, when I had literally not five minutes to spare 
in which to invent a speech. According to Anson's 
ideas, nothing could well be less sane or more per- 
verse than to decline the opportunity of making a 
good speech and then submit to the necessity of 
making a bad one. However, the very complete- 
ness of the malentendu encouraged me to renew 
our interrupted intercourse. I was safe against in- 
conveniently keen discernment. 

He offered to bet the fees of his last case (a big 
one that was sure to go to the House of Lords) that 
before another seven years were out, I should be as 
well pleased with myself, the world, and the one 
woman in it, as he was now. 

It is impossible to dislike a man at the moment 
when he is giving you the strongest expression he 
can of his good-will ; the feeling of horror, even 
disgust, which seized me irresistibly, as I listened to 
him, was altogether impersonal. I thought then 



ECLIPSE. 243 

that my rage was righteous. I felt as if a brutal 
suggestion had been made to me, and I justified the 
exaggerated resentment by taking it as an accusa- 
tion, as if I for one should care no more for the 
common lot of men if only my own hearth were 
warm. But the resentment was too venomous to be 
wholly just, and I have thought since that I might 
have been less angry if I had not felt the augury to 
be ill-judged. He did not in his heart accuse me of 
the kind of selfishness I could repudiate aloud ; he 
only credited me w^ith some of the common qualities 
of our kind in which I felt myself to be wanting. I 
thought it was his duty as a friend to have under- 
stood that little short of a miracle was needed to 
secure me the private felicity he promised with so 
light a heart. And because I could not resent this 
misconception as bitterly as I felt it, I resented all 
the more the cognate assumption that, if I were 
thus consoled, the remaining wretches of the same 
order would be too few to count. 

I was helped to this discovery by another expe- 
rience on which this is not the place to dwell. Suf- 
fice it to say that complaints ^'ery like my own were 
made to me by a comparative stranger just at this 
time. I was careful to avoid the rock of offence 
upon which I had stumbled so painfully, and I said 
nothing to encourage visionary hopes ; but, as kind 
luck would have it, I was able to bring my client 
within reach of the needed chances for his own 



244 ECLIPSE. 

life's growth, and with this change in the environ- 
ment his mood changed too for the brighter. I 
had a pleasant letter from him, acknowledging the 
change, and expressing a hope that he was not there- 
fore going to forget the doomed many, in whose lot 
no change for the better could be made. He added 
that the unexpected help was doubly valuable to 
him, both as a personal advantage and as an answer 
to the troublesome problem whether help might 
come from man to man in the time of need. I had 
^just read and answered this letter, and was revolving 
in my mind the bearing on the general problem of 
the corresponding truth, that helj) also might 7tot 
come from man to man in the time of need, when a 
telegram was brought me. 

It was February. Anson had been married the 
beginning of December, and travelled straight south 
to Naples ; he wrote to me from Amalfi, and then 
from Rome ; all went merrily as marriage-bells. 
There was a new tone of tenderness here and there 
in his letters which reconciled me to the volleys of 
jubilant rapture which he felt it due to friendship 
to fire off every few weeks. The last letter w^arned 
us to expect him home in March. I opened the 
telegram without thought of harm. It was from 
an Italian doctor at Perugia. Anson was dying of 
fever and had bid him send for me. There were 
thirteen minutes left in which to catch the night 
mail ; the cabman drove furiously, and I just had 



ECLIPSE. 245 

time to throw myself into the guard's van without 
a ticket, before the moving train had left the plat- 
form. In fifty hours I was at Perugia. He still 
breathed ; three hours before he had asked for me, 
and they took me to *his room at once. His eyes 
were open, but with a strange look. I tried to 
speak his name cheerily ; slowly a feeble look of 
recognition broke over the changed features. He 
whispered, "Thanks," — a gasping space between 
each Avord — ' ' Thanks — old boy — for coming." 
Then his hand moved faintly, and with yet more 
effort, as I bent over him to catch every breath — 
" Take care of her." The next moment she was a 
widow and I had lost my friend. 

The sad slow homeward journey ended upon the 
anniversary of that accursed eclipse. Need you 
ask why, from that day to this, I have never asked 
myself, nor willingly let another ask, any question 
bearing upon the share of Fate and Right in ruling 
the life and determining the duties of men? And 
from that day to this I have had a superstitious 
horror of the Evil Eye as I see it sometimes in 
dreams, a black, sightless ball, with a narrow silver 
rim, watching with blind, baleful stare the far-off 
struggles of a human soul. 

Postcript by the Master. — I asked Egerton to 
write the above, one day when we had been talk- 
ing of young men's intellectual difficulties. He 



246 ECLIPSE. 

referred to these difficulties of his, and I found so 
much difficulty in understanding them that I asked 
him, in pure curiosity, to write them out for me at 
length, as his contribution to our volume of dis- 
guised confessions. Either *! am stupid, or the 
written statement is hard to follo^v ; and as I am 
guilty of getting the riddle inserted here, perhaps 
I ought to add what little I can in explanation. I 
think the chief trait in Egerton's character was 
something that I can only describe as a conscien- 
tious wilfulness. He wanted to do right, but it 
must be a right of his own choosing, and he never 
felt as if he had done enouG^h oris^hial rigrht to be 
worth having. It was true, and a thing that 
troubled his friends, that his life did seem always 
partly wasted, less productive than it should have 
been considering his real ability, perseverance and 
unselfishness. As one follows his argument, one 
is vexed with what seems like a shifty perversity, a 
determination to have always some unanswerable 
reason for making himself miserable ; but now that 
we have lost him, in looking at his life by the light 
of this, in itself sufficiently undecipherable key, I 
seemed to understand him better than while he 
lived and we persisted in expecting from him the 
performance that did not come. He asked for a 
theoretical solution of difficulties that only admitted 
of a practical solution, which he always just missed. 
It is a fact, a simple fact of observation, needing no 



ECLIPSE. 247 

more explanation than young Martin's broken leg, 
that the prosperous contented man died young, that 
one uncomfortable youth was helped to a career by 
a good-natiu'ed stranger, and that the unhelped 
helper, who was uncomfortable too, did a score of 
things middlingly well, but always just fell short of 
excellence or supreme efficiency. He had a high 
standard and knew he failed to reach it. He chose 
to consider his modest, useful life a failure, and I 
think his friends judge more kindly in saying he 
failed than in saying, " What right had he to judge 
himself by so high a standard?" I think his char- 
acter had enough elements of greatness in it to jus- 
tify him in resenting the friendly suggestion that he 
was no worse than his neighbors, and should be 
content to know it. For him it was a failure to be 
no better than they. 

His weakness — he himself was capable in later 
years of seeing that it was a weakness — lay in 
this : He was not by nature so much in sympathy 
wath any one external tendency or so much in love 
with any single outer aim as to feel his whole 
nature satisfied by the effort to co-operate with the 
one or attain the other. And as the world is wide 
enough for all vigorous human passion to find or 
make itself a field therein, this imperfect adaptation 
of a too fastidious soul to its surroundings is and 
stays a defect, albeit a defect that calls for more 
pity than blame. It calls for pity the more because 



248 ECLIPSE. 

patient and jDltying wisdom may not prove power- 
less to supply to the young groaners in eclipse 
some foot or hand hold whence they may struggle 
into possession of the missing aim or motive. 

As to Egerton, '•' Reqiiiescat in pace^ He 
preached the courage he did not feel, and left his 
part of the world a shade the better for his passage 
through it. 



}^t ^l^botu nf Jial^. 



Let not my love be called idolatry. 

— Shakspeare 



H 



X. 



E had been dead a year and three days. 
Two years ago we were married. One 
of the vows we spoke as married lovers said that 
each day and hour of our life should add something 
to the force and tenderness of our wedded love. I 
asked him for the vow, saying love seemed to grow 
less if it only stayed the same ; one feels less the 
feeling one has got used to ; and he said, Yes, but 
a growing love grew dearer when it had been 
growing long. For that short year we kept our 
vow unbroken, unforgotten, and then I was left 
alone, alone, alone, with the ghostly memory of a 
short year's moments to defy the grim presence of 
interminable years of life to come. 

I tied from every one at once. I was thankful I 
had no child. Every face and voice were hateful to 
me ; every word the}' spoke seemed to scream to 
me, '• All love has left the world with him." They 
spoke as if they had never loved, never loved even 
him, nay, as if they neither knew nor guessed what 
love might be. If they had known, surely they 
would have left me to mourn in peace. I fled ; I 

251 



252 THE SHA DOW OF DBA TH. 

sought a prison where none could follow. Money 
will buy even that, and in this convent by the sea 
the nuns do not think it strange that one should 
kneel all day before an unseen presence, and weep 
and still kneel weeping. 

After the first long months my tears fell more for 
him ; waking in the night, waking at dawn, I 
thought what it must be for him to wake and find 
himself alone. For me it had always been enough 
to know that he was happy, either with me or 
apart ; but to him no happiness was possible 
unshared. The sun is shining to-day ; if it were 
not for the peasants' vineyards I could wish the 
storms were back again. I hate the light he does 
not see. My heart is sore for my dead love's sore 
desolation. They talk of the Jour des mor^s and 
a life beyond the grave ; I think I could bear my 
own life if I thought Charlie were too dead to miss 
me ; but I feel as if love could not die, as if, what- 
ever else was dead, the aching pain at his heart must 
last as long as my heart aches with lonely love. 

The convent stands on a promontory ; the church 
and bell-tower are a landmark to the sailors ; the 
convent garden has a level terrace walk leading to 
the churchyard, and there are hours in the day, 
when the nuns and school-girls are at their duties, 
that I have the garden to myself. I pace up and 
down, gazing blankly into the formless void. The 
world is empty when one has nothing left to lose. 



THE SHADOW OF DEATH. 253 

One can always be alone, too, by kneeling in the 
little church. The visitor of the convent is a high 
ecclesiastic. I had met him in the world, and I 
told him I would live for months or years at the 
convent if he would see that no one ever spoke to 
n:ie of my creed or theirs, or the grief that sent me 
to this shelter. He has kept faith, and I endure 
the village priest's kind benedicite. 

Can it be that I was a faithless or unhappy wife .^ 
I try in vain to conjure up the image of my owni 
lost bliss. Surely I loved him and was blessed in 
his dear love, and yet I cannot feel as if I had a 
loss of my own to weep for. It is Charlie's life, 
strong, bright and joyous, as we traced its course 
in thought ; that is what I have lost, the loss for 
which my tears fall still. I was four-and-twenty 
when we met, and had never thought of love or 
marriage. I heard people say it was not good to 
live alone, but I was not alone in the large ever- 
widening circle of a merry marrying family. I had 
never thought of wishing for the happiness of love 
in marriage for myself; it seemed there were so 
many wanting it, I had no right to claim such a 
lot before so many others with a better claim to it 
than I. Indeed, w^ien Charlie came to see us, I 
never thought it was for me he came, and I was 
slow to understand or be persuaded that he claimed 
me with a love that had a right to the best answer 
I could give. 



254 THE SHADOW OF DEATH. 

Surely I loved him ; why else did the world end 
for me with his death? And yet my heart seems 
cold, as if my very love were dead as well. Grief 
seems to choke me, and yet I cannot grieve, because 
it seems to me a little thing, among the million 
sorrows of the poor, the anguish mixed with wrong 
and shame, the cruel losses through which other 
wrong is wrought, it seems a little thing by the side 
of these that the joy of my one life is dead. It was 
not to win love's joy that I let my life unite with 
his ; one must answer to a call ; and now there is 
silence everywhere, and in the dull heartlessness of 
my grief, it seems to me that it is not his love I 
mourn and miss ; it is the sweetness of the voice 
calling on me for love. Who is it says that — 

Youth is blest 
Because it has a life to fill with love.'' 

I am not old even now, and shall I fill my life with 
love of that lost blessedness.^ Though I asked for 
nothing, that sweet voice came to me : shall I have 
learnt from it only to ask angrily in vain? The 
memory is mine ; it is not a small thing, that and 
my constant soul bound together like lovers in a 
first embrace, — Oh, the memory of his first 
kiss ! — that memory and I will live unflinchingly 
through all the years, and we shall die undivided 
when I go to rest with him. 



THE SHADOW OF DEATH. 255 

An old lay sister died this week, and has been 
buried to-day. It was Alay when I wrote last, and 
October finds me still here, alone w^th the sad 
memories that are turning to reproach. Those un- 
explained last words of his : '•'•I leave it all to you," 
— they thought he meant the land — as if he or I 
could have thought of that at the last hour of part- 
ing, I have thought again and again of the trust 
those words conveyed, and no meaning ever joined 
to them till now\ I thought perhaps he meant 
rest was for him, he left the pain and grief to me ; 
but the slow months bring understanding, and I 
think he meant that the life w^e thought was his 
was left to me, and to me he left the doing, the 
causing to be done, all we had planned together 
that he should do to justify his life. In a book of 
his I found this passage marked w^ith an index 
finger : — 

'•You may learn to know yourself through love, as 
you do after years of life, whether you are fit to lift 
them that are about you, or whether you are but a 
cheat, a load on the backs of your fellows. The im- 
pure perishes, the ineflicient languishes, the -moderate 
comes to its autumn of decay; these are of the kinds 
that aim at satisfaction, to die of it soon or late. The 
love that survives has strangled craving; it lives be- 
cause it lives, to nourish and succor like the heavens. 
But to strangle craving is indeed to go through a death 
before you reach your immortality." 



256 THE SHADOW OF DEATH. 

My love is not dead ; it has turned into a hungry 
craving, I thought I loved him purely, and I grieve 
that he no longer needs my love. All the springs 
of human feeling dried up in me when he died. 
For longer than our married life, half as long again 
as my whole life's share of happiness, I have lived 
in selfish, barren solitude. At first I w^ondered, 
could this last forever? As the days and months 
passed, it seemed there was no force to end it. I 
had no force to question, was it right.? What was 
the use of asking, though it were wrong, was any- 
thing else so much as possible.? 

Is anything else possible? I dwell apart from 
the little cares and brawls of the convent life, and 
standing thus apart, the stillness and the peace, the 
remoteness from the eager life of towns, the near 
presence of the church and graveyard — it seems so 
short a step from the nun's cell to the bier on which 
the old lay sister sleeps, while the psalms are chanted 
round her — all this reminds me of an early longing 
for something like a cloister, where a sad laity could 
take vow^s not quite like those of Christendom. I 
could not take these sisters' vows, even if I shared all 
their faith. It is too easy ; it is seeking a coward's 
ease to build walls and bar the windows against the 
world's w^ickedness, and then, like raw troops grown 
bold in garrison, rail at the enemy who challenges 
us to conflict in the field. I want a cloister whose 
walls are faithfulness and its bars love, a fortress 



THE SHADOW OF DEATH. 257 

invisible and present everywhere, a refuge from the 
world's temptations, and one's own soul's hungry 
craving, the craving whereby the cunning world 
tempts to angiy, covetous discontent. 

The world has robbed me of my love ; can I take 
a vow of loving service to the cruel world ? Can 
one wish to return good for such an utter evil ? The 
love that has " strangled craving," that is stronger 
than death or any other distance, can live without 
happiness ; but can love prosper a whole lifetime 
widowed of perfect joy? The perfect love gives 
everything and receives everything, without thought 
or efibrt, almost without consciousness of desire. 
But how are the affections of the heart to remain 
ever tender and responsive, so strong and ready as 
to give their own tone and color to the whole of 
life, if the self-abandonment of answered love is 
made impossible forever, if at every turn the feel- 
ing must be checked that grow^s unchecked into an 
exacting clamor, a cry after the answer that does 
not come? 

I suppose there is still too much self-seeking 
self-assertion, too little disinterested love, while one 
has the feeling of such check. In regard to him, I 
never felt the room for any check or chill, not only 
because I had his love : I felt, whether or no, that 
he must have had mine, and that only to love is 
blessedness enough, divinely more than enough. 
If one loved others with as pure a tenderness, there 



258 THE SHADOW OF DEATH. 

would be no painful sense of self-repression or re- 
pulse. I cried yesterday because a little black-eyed 
baby in the convent school cried when I stooped to 
kiss her ; but it was not to give the child pleasure 
that I stooped ; it was to feel once more the near- 
ness of some human love. I was not thinking of 
the child, rather, already, before I knew it, the 
question was framing itself in my thought : — One 
cannot live without love ; can one live vs^ithout the 
joy of love, which is not to be loved again, but that 
the beloved one should be blessed in our love } My 
beloved lives still, — he lives in my unchanging love, 
but oh ! the impotance of mortal loving ! What 
profit has he in the silent grave .^ I am desolate, and 
the sad faithfulness avails him nothing. Would 
God I too were dead ! Can one live, I was asking, 
when love itself grows barren at the icy face of 
death ? 

And even now I answer, without haste and after 
listening to every doubtful pause : — This, too, is 
possible. Married love and the passionate friend- 
ship which is as the marriage of twin souls, these 
are the first open gates ; the way of salvation leads 
plainly through them, and the flames that dart 
across the portal and fasten consumingly upon the 
selfish lusts of those who would pass through the 
gates have not much terror for the blest elect who 
enter hand in hand. But there is another gate, 
narrow, obscure, to which each one draws near 



THE SHADOW OF DEATH. 259 

alone, and the path to it is through the valley of the 
shadow of death. We tread barefoot and the stones 
are sharp, we fall, the ground is a flame, the air is 
a suffocating smoke, invisible demons ply theii" 
scouro^es, the burden of lost g^ladness is a crushino- 
weight. There is one strange pleasure in the agony, 
— to feel sharp flames consuming what was left in 
us of selfish lust ; and there is one pain passing all 
the rest, — to feel the same flame fasten thirstily 
upon our every wound, within, without, and con- 
sume the very pain, as if that too was sin. 

The path is long through the dark and winding 
hollow ; who knows if we shall live to reach the 
end, where is the gate of religious love, and few 
there be that find it ? But that fierce trial can teach 
as much as the sacramental mysteries of twice- 
blessed love ; and it is lawful for each of those who 
have followed the divine teaching to the end to feel 
that no other lesson could have been so full of deep 
instruction for themselves. God forbid I should 
blaspheme the sacredness of the love that \vas once 
his life, because the gladness of it is now turned to 
a spreading desolation. Only to me this death is 
not the end of life, rather the beginning of a life- 
long worship, and this too is a ^vay of salvation. 
Desire is past ; what could he desire at my hands ? 
He has passed from me, out into the unseen, unfelt 
world, upon whose bidding I Avould wait in meek 
obedience. It is as if I and my God were alone in 



26o THE SHADOW OF DEATH. 

the infinite space ; the void world is not too wide 
for a devout enclosure, and it is there my vows are 
to be paid. 

It is not laid upon all as a duty, but it is lawful to 
a few when the necessity befalls to dwell in the 
world, in the bright, wholesome, sunlit Avorld — in 
it but yet not of it. When the world's best has van- 
ished from the body's sight, it is lawful, nay, it is 
good, a high and blessed privilege, to cleave for 
evermore to the lost divine invisible love, to wor- 
ship and adore the dear unseen, rather than quench 
the spirit of faithful renunciation and seek scraps of 
feeble consolation among the so-called goods of 
earthly life. Good indeed and in truth for those 
who are born to find their own good there ; but to 
the spouse of a heavenl}^ love, false and mocking 
shadows, a feeble mimicry of the true inalienable 
spiritual inheritance that remains for ever to solace 
those who are faithful in bereavement. 

There are two sisters in this convent and there is 
one priest in the adjoining town whose faces are like 
a sermon on the poetry and the meaning of the reli- 
gious life. The refined, exalted expression of spiri- 
tual "detachment" from the momentary interests 
of life is a permanent but not an exclusive charac- 
teristic of the countenance. Interest, concern, sym- 
pathetic alarm or pleasure, kindness, deference, 
amusement sometimes, and sometimes even indig- 



THE SUA D O W OF DBA TH. 26 1 

nation, appear on the sweet face in their due turn, 
without prejudice to the lasting dominant air of 
absorption in the unseen world, as if the true " re- 
ligious " had lived face to face with the embodied 
eternal realities of human life, as if the personal 
life had been lived out alone with the unchanging 
divine and spiritual essences ; and then, for love of 
the divine in God and man, they consent to live 
again, without personal life of their own, among 
the mixed and impure lives of the myriads in whose 
personal life the divine element is so faint, so feeble, 
so fragmentary, so inseparably entangled with base 
and earthly matter, that fe^v among them can rec- 
ognize its divinity unaided, and fewer still be 
brought to apprehend the glory of a life that should 
be all divine. 

The Catholic Church was not far from the truth 
in its recognition of the two vocations outside the 
doom of sinful failure. There is the secular ideal, 
reached or sought by men like my own lost Charlie ; 
natural, j^i'osperous human lives, spent in doing 
willingly naturally good, self-chosen work, in the 
beneficent, enjoyable exercise of power, in the de- 
lig^htful indulsrence of beneficent desires. The 
earthly paradise is when such souls as these live in 
unbroken unity together. But earth is not Paradise, 
and some who have seen the gates of heaven open 
have seen them open only to close behind all that 
made their heaven on earth. And for others they 



262 THE SHADOW OF DEATH 

have not opened at all ; the natural life is dull and 
mean and mischievous. And alone, near and yet 
apart from both the others, the religious life follows 
its calm, strong-, unvarying course — a life that 
spends itself in joyful worship of tlie living good, 
in sad, devout commemoration of the good that has 
been living, that lives now only in its fruitful memo- 
ries, and the sad devotion bom of loss and worship, 
and in faitliful, patient sti'ife against the tyranny of 
evil nature, in loyal championship of the feeble 
tribes, the scattered units who cling feebly through 
oppression to a worthier birthright. Thus rich, 
thus varied, thus fed by nature, outlined and sus- 
tained by the chronic necessities of human life and 
labor, the religious life follows its solitary course, — 
alone, yet not alone, engaged at every turn in the 
countless interests of unnumbered daily lives, but 
with tlie deepest inner consciousness of tlie soul 
consciously possessed by something else than the 
personal care for these succeeding acts of faith 
or hope or charity ; possessed, namely, by the 
overmastering, undying passion of adoring love for 
the spiritual source and centre, the conceived imper- 
sonation of the divinely wise and tender power in 
whose strength alone the worshipper goes forth to 
conquer and to die, — to die the living death of 
those who live by faith, the life of the immortals 
which is death to man, instead of by sight, by the 
very beatific vision of an incarnate good, which 



THE SHADOW OF DEATH. 263 

overshadows blessed life by the impending shadow 
of a personal death. 

I am driven to say all this more plainly to m3'self 
than I had wished by the insistence of kind friends 
— kinder than wise I think them, and one is apt to 
feel unwise kindness as a cruelty. They scold me, 
with gentle sympathy, it is true, for giving up the 
world, my friends, and duties in it, to live alone 
here with an idle memory. Do they think I would 
have done this // / could have done otherwise? 
Now, it is not because of their kind moralities, nor 
because I see new light upon the path of duty, that 
I feel the hour for some change is at hand. There is 
a duty owing to the deepest feelings of the heart. If 
we feel it possible to obey their silent urging, im- 
possible not to wait and follow in submission, who 
shall dare to say that we and the iiTesistible impulse 
are wrong and blameful ? The passion that possesses 
us 'tvholiy, body, soul and spirit, mind, will and 
conscience, all at once has a right to male us as it 
does and must, and to resist the promptings of such 
passion at the bidding of remembered platitudes is 
like sinning against the Holy Ghost within us ; it 
is a lie against our own soul's truth, of which the 
fruit is that worst damnation, the silencing of the 
soul's native voice, banning the sinner to drift 
rudderless through the remaining days. 

Mj friends say, is it not an indulgence of the 



264 THE SHADOW OF DEATH. 

selfishness of grief that holds me here alone? They 
say, though he is gone, are there none left that 
need your love ? I listened silently ; I did not 
choose to answer sternly : " The heart knoweth its 
own bitterness," and w^ho is such a stranger as a 
mere good friend to the mystery of its joy and grief? 
Have I said — I hardly care to say, because it would 
have hurt my Charlie's soul to hear — that in losing 
him my most utter loss was the losing one who 
could not live without my love? For his sake I 
could have surrendered all the rest ; but that one 
worst loss had to be borne. I am alone ; the others 
can do without me : — for you see they have. One 
cannot even wish to cease to feel this desolation as a 
pain. One loves all the same, and chooses, since it 
must be so, to have tliat pain to bear ; it takes all 
one's strength to bear it w^ithout bitterness. And 
then kind friends break in with warning voice : 
" You are wasting your love upon a memory ; he 
needs it not ; do you go and love those who need." 
O Charlie I they are cruel ! Charlie ! if any 
knowledge could haunt you now, would you not 
know it is my hardest grief that the love I bear to 
you is fruitless for your good? But, my love, my 
love ! is the fault of that in me ? Should I not have 
sei-\^ed you with eager faithfulness and glad devotion 
through a life of love if fate had left you in my 
arms ? Who dares to reproach the stricken victims 
of the pitiless deatli ? Let the rest find their, happi- 



THE SHADOW OF DEATH. 265 

ness where they may ; what have I done that they 
should call on me to go out into the highways and 
hedges and beg amongst the starving beggars for a 
pauper mate, because the king has no profit from 
his subjects' love ? Let those who must or may love 
once, or twice, or thrice, let their happiness be born 
again when it is dead, but earth held only one joy 
for me, and that is dead, and my love still worships 
at its tomb. Though my love himself came back 
to chide me, I could say no other than that I do well 
to love and worship mournfully. 

There is but one love to which, without faithless- 
ness, the widowed soul may be abandoned with the 
boundless self-abandonment of the one sole, infinite, 
unrenewable passion — the love of the infinite, im- 
personal, spiritual divinity, the passionless calm of 
infinite truth, the ideal of perfect wisdom, strength 
and mercy, which we see as in a glass darkly, when 
a noble human soul casts its shadow on the troubled 
stream of life. It may be that without this fleeting 
vision of the God in man I had been left godless in 
the lonely world. But to have seen once is to love 
for ever, and all the pure goodness that I loved in 
him is with me now as a God immortal, adorable, 
and present everywhere. He lives in God, God 
lives in him ; my life is hid in the worship and the 
love of God in him. 

He had plans of what we and our children should 



266 THE SHADOW OF DEATH. 

do. He said it took two generations working to^ 
gether to do the best that might be. But I am 
widowed, and no child of his is with me. He said, 
playing reproachfully with my lack of high ambi- 
tion, that I was born to be the mother of great sons, 
'' or," he added, "great daughters, which will be 
more original." And yet no child of his is with 
me. It was always my delight to believe his jesting 
words ; he laughed in kindness, and his kindness 
fulfilled many prophecies. Can the dead work 
miracles, and the barren widow be a joyful mother 
of children? Charlie ! Love is cruel as the grave, 
and instead of peaceful sorrow you bid me seek the 
trembling pain, the heart-sick, helpless longing of 
the mother who has the power to bring forth — 
who is there that cannot bring forth something f^-^ 
but has so little strength to bequeath along with the 
doubtful boon of life, that she sees, with the second 
sight of love, her feeble offspring struggling vainly 
with the world it cannot mend or master because of 
its feebleness, or rather hers who gave it no better 
strength. Is it not so with mothers? The child 
and the anxious pain and grief are theirs ; how little 
of the triumph — if it came — would they dare to 
call their own? Only the mother's pang, without 
which this place would have been left for another to 
fill. Less well? Then we have not lived in vain. 
I cannot do your will, my own, but as I go 
through the wilderness, the pier.cing voice of an- 



THE SHADOW OF DEATH. 267 

guish crying aloud, and calling in the name of our 
love, " Let his good will be done," here, and here, 
thus and now, — this voice cr}'ing in the wilderness 
will touch some ears, it may be, and what I cannot 
do for you, my love, myself, may yet be done at the 
long last by many who will scarcely know why or 
■whence the call has come to them. My life is ended, 
yet 1 am not dead. I am a voice crying in the wil- 
-derness, calling to the living from the sanctuary of 
the dead, " My children, my children ! do the will 
of the blessed who are gone, and a double blessing 
will be upon your love and on your lives." 

Still the months went by. I knew that light and 
guidance would come, were coming, to me ; it was 
mine to wait. There was one sweet-faced girl from 
the convent school who wished to take the v«il, and 
she had a friend who, half for company, thought 
that she too had a vocation. The latter had rich 
parents, and a hopeful marriage ready aiTanged for 
the completion of her eighteenth year. I had come 
to know these girls well, and they told me of their 
innocent young dreams and longings. I was not in 
haste to leave the convent, for no one else in reach 
could or was likely to tell these children all that I 
could. I spoke freely of the difficulty of the relig- 
ious life, translating all that makes its rightful charm 
into the orthodox language of the cloister. I think 
they understood. Both grew to feel a girlish fond- 



268 THE SHAD OW OF DBA TH. 

ness for the English stranger, and I think it was 
not without my help, that one consented to do her 
parents' bidding and seek her mission in the world, 
while the other with open eyes chose the strenuous 
peace of cloistral vows. 

I waited for her profession. The service is sad to 
those who think that the young life might be better 
spent, but it is a pretty and a touching thing to see 
a young soul dare to vow eternal faith to the divine 
ideal ; and I, who hold as strongly a very different 
creed from theirs, chose nevertheless to let that ser- 
vice stand as the symbol for one more profession 
than the sisters guessed. I knelt unseen in an outer 
chapel, and one by one my vows went up with hers. 

When all was over a solemn stillness seemed to 
fill the air. For the last time I paced the terrace 
walk alone that evening ; a row of cypress trees 
edged either side, like black spires shooting into the 
blue overhead, and between these grim sentinels 
pink roses flowered against the foliage of newly bud- 
ding lemon trees. The air was still, and the sun 
had already sunk behind the mountain shoulder. 
There were no clouds overhead, and the line of sea 
and sky was clear, but above the sea a low line of 
curling cloud, like the level smoke from a giant 
steamer, lay motionless along the horizon, and the 
setting sun dyed it a deep, luminous, rose red. And 
the coast line opposite grew to a deeper and deeper 
rosy red ; cliffs and woods were bathed in crimson, 



THE SHADOW OF DEATH. 269 

the little fishing-boat had a crimson sail, and some- 
thing strange, like a rosy veil, seemed cast over the 
stillness of the blue sky and sea. The transparent 
light was like the ruby glow^ of a summer sunlit 
dewdrop. The glory and the peace were supreme ; 
it was the crowning moment of the day's rich beauty. 
I had watched the crimson deepening to the last ; it 
had not yet begun to fade ; it seemed to me the hour 
had come. 

I rose and crossed the terrace without a back- 
ward glance. I sought my convent room, and that 
same night were written the letters pledging me to 
return. The next day's dawn found half my lug- 
gage packed for England, and in three days more 
the convent grating was a memory, the wide en- 
closure of the world a present truth of sense. And 
the deep crimson glow of that sunset scene lives on 
for ever in my thought undimmed, like the un- 
dimmed memory of deathless love. 



ni f$i Tirb$0. 



The day is short and the work is great. It is not incumbent upon thee 
to complete the work, but thou must not therefore cease from it. 

— Talmud. 



XL 



I SAY, Phllo, how is it that most people's lives 
somehow don't seem to come to much ? " 

The question began with a rush and ended rather 
hesitatingly, as if the problem, which had been 
occupying the speaker's mind for at least ten min- 
utes, did not appear quite as large, when reduced to 
^vords, as he had expected. There was a deprecat- 
ing fall in the boy's voice which disarmed severity ; 
besides, he is the son of one of my best and oldest 
friends, and I answer to the name of " Philo " in 
token that I have accepted the role of guide and 
philosopher which he has been pleased to assign 
me ; — partly, I suspect, with a view to combining 
the requisite modicum of respect with an epithet of 
handy brevity and a comfortably familiar sound. 

It was Sunday ; we had been for a walk over 
the downs, and were resting on the steep sloping 
summit. Lying on one's back one looked up into 
the deep blue of a cloudless May sky ; a faint hum 
of insects broke the silence at intervals, or was 
drowned by the note of a distant bird ; a light wind 
neither cold nor hot, but soft like the touch of a 

273 



274 SAT EST VIX/SSE, 

child's hand, blew through one's hair and played 
with the blades of grass and tiny gold and violet 
flowers of the short-cropped turf as the broad winds 
play upon the waving cornfields, scattering lights 
and shadows in a dreamy network. On one side 
there was a glimpse of blue sea cut by the green 
slope below us. We had thrown ourselves upon the 
grass to rest, but there is a difference between sixteen 
and sixty, and Johnny's mind having been more ac- 
tive than mine, the result delivered itself as above. 

We were staying at the house of a rather distin- 
guished political personage, and the night before 
several ex-celebrities had been brought together in 
a kind of family reunion^ early friendships or cross 
marriages supplying the link when there was no 
actual relationship. The dinner had been one of 
those social successes which are growing more and 
more rare, so that I was curious to know why my 
young friend's impressions should have been of the 
vanitas vanitatum order. It appeared presently 
that the disappointment did not begin with the 
public conversation of the great men ; the dinner had 
been delightful — " at least," he went on, '' it was 
delightful to me ; but most of the men were thirty or 
forty or fifty years older than I am, and I thought I 
should like to go on talking like that for ten years 
or so. But then one would have talked about 
everything, and I shouldn't like to go on saying the 
same thing ; and when Lord was talking to 



SAT EST VIXISSE. 275 

me this morninof he did sav the same thlnsfs that 

IVIr. liad said the day before yesterday at 

breakfast, and it wasn't for the sake of making talk 
to me, because he stuck to it after I had begun 
to ask questions about something else. And 
]Mr. * * * was just the same ; they all seemed con- 
tent to talk about things as if they had nothing to 
do with making them happen ; and the things that 
they do talk about doing, and care about a great 
deal more than I could, all seem so small, so far 
away from the things their best talk makes one 
feel like caring about a great deal ; and what I mean 
by its all coming to nothing is that they don't seem 
to care now, and if I do, it's only — they all three as 
good as said so — it's only because Tm a boy. Wlien 
I'm as old as they are I shall care as little and have 
done as little too ; for, after all, I couldn't help think- 
ing that they had all given up caring because it was 
no use ; they could never do all they wanted ; and 
as they all started meaning to be great men, when 
they found they couldn't do what they wished, they 
turned round and tried to make other people wish 
for ^vhat they could do, and so went on doing 
middle-sized thino^s without carino: much." And 
not yet out of breath, the boy proceeded to sub- 
stantiate his indictment by some personal illustra- 
tions, never very hard to find, of the discrepancy 
between the young ambitions of divers men of the 
time and their mature achievements. 



376 SAT EST VIXISSB. 

I intimated that sweeping criticism was an easy 
and an idle task ; it was for the rising generation to 
achieve more if it could. But this the boy declared 
to be a subterfuge unworthy of myself: " For what 
I like in you, Philo, is that you never snub a fellow 
in that way, talking as if one could never do any 
good now because it isn't a dozen years hence. Of 
course you are a walking wet-blanket and all that 
sort of thing, but then your cold water," he was 
pleased to say, " takes the form of making one feel 
everything worth doing so tremendously fine and 
great that it is too difficult — one has no chance of 
getting through with it ; and that's quite different 
from the feeling that it is foolish to care at all 
because one can't do anything big enough to be 
worth caring for. And then if one says anything 
like this to people who used to care and don't now, 
they look wise and say, ' Wait a few years, and 
then' — And then, I say, if I end by not caring 
either, does that make it any better } Doesn't it 
make things all the worse if one generation after 
another begins the same way to end alike, begin- 
ning with mistaken zeal to end in contented 
failure ? " 

There was nothing very novel in the boy's con- 
fused account of his first impression of disenchant- 
ment with the world's " distinguished names." 
But it brought back to me some of those questions 
which it is usually the last act of expiring youth to 



SAT EST VIXISSE. 277 

put on one side, which it is the triumph of suc- 
cessful middle age to bury in oblivion, but which, 
after all, it seems can only be kept out of sight for 
less than half a lifetime. I had been much given 
at one time to asking myself, Does it all come to 
much? and though, for reasons of my own, I 
dropped ^he question about the same time as most 
men, I always retained a kind of sympathy for boys 
and men who have the courage of their foolishness, 
and refuse to ape the virtuous content to which their 
young souls are strangers. Somehow a bachelor 
always seems to be thought of as a youngish man 
until he is unmistakably an old one, and to this 
day I feel more sure that the young Irreconcilables 
who make a confident of me may easily live to be 
wiser than I am now, than that I am already so 
very much wiser than they (and I needn't say they 
humor the belief) . 

There are some things that one gets to know by 
the mere fact of living long enough, but very few 
people are able to spend all their time in learning 
and none in forgetting. An idle man who has sat 
loose to practical affairs has a chance of acquiring 
his worldly wisdom so superficially that its lessons 
need not quite efface the naive first impressions of 
earlier days ; and so perhaps I was born to mediate 
between Johnny's frank severity and the self-satis- 
fied wisdom of his elders. 

There is surely something to be said on both sides. 



27S ^AT EST VIX/SSB. 

The young hardly allow for the intense difficulty 
'—material and unromantic difficulty — of choosing 
an admirable course, and pursuing it with sure feet. 
The old are apt to see shallow scorn and ignorant 
irreverence in blame which has its truer motive in 
respect for ideals still unmissed. But, as I think 
slightly of the senile wisdom that cannot be com- 
municated to a younger understanding, I wished to 
rehearse for Johnny's benefit a few of the reasons 
why it is fair to judge men by their attempts as well 
as by their achievements, and why, even in youth, 
it is as well not to set the whole heart too fondly on 
the attempt at achievements in which we may fail 
without guilt of our own. 

I said : " Is it reasonable to ask of life that it 
should always be ' coming ' to something different 
from the living moment that is? The moments 
that interest us most in life and attach us to it 
most do not hang together like the parts of a syl- 
logism ; our living interest is in the elements, not 
in the whole they form at last ; and perhaps that is 
why those who have not yet lived through those 
thrilling moments are least ready to accept the 
moments as themselves the crown of life. But we 
Will talk of this again upon the island." 

Johnny had been a privileged visitor at the castle 
since he was nine years old, and the next Sep- 
tember, just after his birthday, I reminded the 
Master that he was entitled to initiation as an " old 



SAT EST VIXISSE. 2 79 

friend" now, for I wanted to know whether the 
" Vignettes" would leave the same kind of impres- 
sion on his mind as the conversation of cabinet min- 
isters. For two or three mornings he kept away 
from us, reading them seriously alone ; then I met 
him returning the volume to the tower, and as he 
followed me silently to the observatory roof, I 
asked in his own words, "Well, what does it all 
come to ? " 

He was still grave, silent for nearly two minutes, 
and at last asked, " May I say just what I think?" 
To do him justice, he seldom pauses for permis- 
sion, and I nod encouragement, but he still hesi- 
tates before beginning a slow reply: "Well, I 
hardly know, you see, if it were all true, — but of 
course, even if it isn't true, it might be — I think 
that's just it. I've read all the reminiscences 
straight through, and I feel at the end just as I did 
that day on Beachy Head when you pulled me up 
for saying most people's lives didn't seem to come 
to much. What does it all come to? I under^ 
stand that there is a difference between talking 
or thinking about things and living through them, 
and that if one feels one is living the right life for 
one's self, one needn't be able to make one's feeling 
into something like the answer of a conundrum. 
But — you won't mind my saying? — ^^I do think the 
clever people who have lived through a real life 
ought to be able to tell us, who have hardly begun, 



28o SAT EST VIXISSE. 

whether we shall think it's worth doing when it's 
done, or whether that depends on how we do it ; 
and if so, which is the way they would try, ' if,' as 
they're so fond of saying, ' I had my time to come 
over again.' You and I now," and here he looks 
me ingenuously in the face, — "I feel as if you 
ought to know just everything I want to be told. 
I don't say you ought to be able to answer any or 
every body, but, on your honor as a philosopher, 
am I so stupid that you can't tell me what you feel 
in phrases that one can understand in less than a 
quarter of a century ? " 

It was a fair challenge, and I promised the boy 
that my long-delayed contribution to the castle 
records should consist in no ambiguous passage of 
romance, but in a few senilities on the ancient 
theme, " Sat est vixissey 

The question that all young people want to have 
answered beforehand is, "What had I better do 
with my life, and what am I likely to meet vs^ith in 
it to enjoy and to endure ? " Perhaps good advice 
would be less unwelcome than it often is if those 
who gave it avowed at the outset that it is likely 
enough to be unpleasant to take ; that the fullest 
knowledge of what might be best to do in any crisis 
goes little or no way towards making it naturally 
easy or desirable to do that best. I, at all events, 
will not tempt you to hear me by any hope or 
promise that I am going to prophesy smooth things. 



SAT EST VIXISSE. 281 

At starting, I find it very difficult to innovate in 
substance upon the corrmonplaces accepted by good 
folks before me. I have often been amused at my- 
self for having arrived, slowly and by devious routes, 
at elaborately expressed conclusions, which, as soon 
as they got finally stated, turned out to be a mere 
paraphrase of the moral platitudes from which my 
mind wished to emancipate itself at first. How- 
ever, here is a safe rule to begin with. I do not 
know in which form it is most likely to be acted on, 
but you may have it in the farthest fetched. The 
younger you begin to act on it the better ; it is never 
too young. 

In the moments, however short, when there is 
nothing that you wish to do, and nothing that you 
are obliged to do, do not wait and wish for wishes 
to arise ; spend the interval in cultivating, by pre- 
ference a talent, or, if you can lay your hand on 
none, at all events without fail a faculty. The odds 
are overwhelming that any acquisition will come 
in useful some time, and in any case the power of 
working without the stimulus of desire, the habit 
of working whenever you have nothing better to do, 
are themselves among the most valuable of acquisi- 
tions. I do not say. that you should force your na- 
ture into w^holly uncongenial efforts ; no good is 
done against the grain, and there must be some 
knots and knobs in all our scaffolding ; but we may 
train the young growing wood as we please, and 



282 SAT EST VIXISSE, 

we cannot make up our minds too soon as to the 
supreme desirability of growing strong and straight, 
and as tall as we can without risking a feeble stoop. 

But the advice sometimes asked for is of a sort 
that in the nature of things cannot be given. Such 
questioning as this : What is my nature, or what 
shall I allow it to become? or again, My untried 
nature being (as I guess) thus and tlius, what life will 
it be best for me to aim at leading ? Such question- 
ing involves the hidden answers to so many other 
questions that simple folks are not much to blame for 
bidding the curious ones bide their time in silence. 

It is possible to think over the commonest rela- 
tions of life and generalize about the safest way of 
dealing with this or that ordinary complication, but 
when you come to individual appeals, I must know 
your circumstances and powers before knowing what 
you can do ; and I must know the circumstances 
oi your circumstances before knowing what hints 
they proffer for your guidance in the way of hin- 
drance or opportunity. It is easy to say, follow 
your own innocent impulses, unless they come in 
collision with your neighbor's ; the impulse may be 
wanting or collision probable ; any way the counsel 
is too vague to be of use. And yet you need not 
blame your counsellor; ; the question itself is vague ; 
perhaps (but do not dwell on this parenthesis) its 
vagueness marks the want of strength in those char- 
acters that cannot forbear to ask it* 



SAT EST VrXISSE. 283 

• Still, in dealing with external obstacles aS well 
ae with subjective difficulties, one may repeat the 
warning. Do not force your nature. In choosing 
the occupation of your life, if you are content to 
Work in a groove traced out beforehand, do not 
despise yourself for such docility, and imagine that 
if only you were cleverer you would invent new 
ways of disagreeing with your neighbors. Accept 
}^urgood fortune, for it is such, and remember that 
if you have to waste none of your strength and pa- 
tience in clearing a field of action for yourself, you 
should have the more left for raising the standard 
of efficiency in meeting the demands of indispens- 
able routine. 

On the other hand, however, supposing, after a 
candid trial and the modest reflection that there is 
nothing creditable in any kind of incapacity — sup- 
posing after all that' you still honestly and truly 
cannot make the best of yourself by acting upon 
the lines prescribed, then, in almost any case, you 
may and should assert your claim to strike another 
path. There is so little of providential adaptation 
between young people and their surroundings, that 
it is always possible the former may be right even 
in rejecting* opportunities of a distinctly favorable 
kind ; and besides, the offered opportunities are not 
by any means always favorable. Only remember 
this: it is easier to live the life that is expected 
from us, and you have no right to undertake a work^ 



284 SA T EST VIXISSE. 

of needless difficulty, unless you are able and will' 
ing to subdue the difficulties and justify your rejec- 
tion of the lighter task. 

It is possible that fate has been hard, and only 
given you a choice between uncongenial oppor- 
tunities and the encounter with obstacles beyond 
your strength. Should this be so, try to see the 
bearing of the facts so justly for yourself that you 
may accept which ever fate needs must, instead of 
having it thrust upon you in a worse form by force. 
It belongs to the A B C of sanity not to rail at 
luck. It is perfectly true that some people have just 
so much strength as will enable them to succeed if 
the chances are favorable, and to fail if luck goes 
against them. If you are one of these, you have 
my deepest sympathy, but you can only compel my 
respect and admiration by rising above your fate — 
by consenting — you are still free in this — either to 
sacrifice your own imagined best, in order that your 
part in the world may be the most effective in your 
reach, or to renounce the prospect of personal suc- 
cess for the sake of faithfulness to your inner con- 
viction as to what success alone is supremely worth 
having. 

But a consistent run of luck for or against the 
individual is rare. The majority may count upon 
an average lot, though all begin with desires and 
aspirations after something better. Supposing, as 
a schoolboy or an undergraduate, you feel, let us 



SAT EST VIXISSE. 285 

say, like one of Bulwer Lytton's heroes, an interest- 
ing, intelligent youth confronting an interesting, 
perplexing, tantalizing world. Note, I beseech you, 
the vagueness of your own feeling, the diffused 
indefiniteness of your sense of power and longing. 
At a very early age one can understand that the 
world has no answer to such unconditioned appeals, 
and that no one has a chance of living to accom- 
plish great things who has not patience to live 
long enough for his own powers to specialize and 
develop. 

I understand the youthful intolerance of le pro- 
visoire : there is nothing more pitiably pathetic than 
a middle age spent in waiting for the chances that 
come of themselves to one in a thousand. But if 
we consider the case dispassionately, that is not the 
alternative. It is abnormal — not sane or natural — 
to wait half a lifetime for a chance of beginning to 
live; but it is natural, normal, and even necessary, 
to begin life by gathering impressions and informa- 
tion which can only attain their full significance 
later, when turned into material to feed the powers 
that have meanwhile been cultivated in blindfold 
faith. I would urge no one to be content with a life 
at once idle and empty, but I contend no one of us 
has a right to reckon on the full contentment afforded 
by an adequate share in the fruit of our own and 
others' work until our own contribution has passed 
the margin of average sufficiency, and left a balance 



2^ SAT EST VJXISSB. 

over by way of insurance against mischances. If 
you are always unlucky, ask yourself through what 
defect you fail to give the world a fair chance of 
doing indifferently well by you. 

Gne of the most damaging indecisions of youth is 
to feel or say, ' ' I would give all my time and pains 
-gladly and obstinately to this ^rt, that science, the 
other branch of industry, if only I could be assured 
that my work would reach eminence in the end ; if 
not, I will prefer a less arduous road into obscurity.^* 
As one looks upon the hundreds of young ambitions 
near at hand, who can have the heart to say, " Prob- 
ably none of you will attain any kind of eminence, 
and in a little while very few of you will care." I 
cannot outlive my pity for these doomed aspirations. 
But there must be something wrong in our whole 
way of looking at things if each generation is con- 
demned to begin with illusions and end with indif- 
ference or despair. Can we not procure acceptance 
among old and young for the belief that tlie best 
good is not just the pre-eminence of one small head 
above the rest, but some amelioration of the gross 
result, in the attainment of which no single particle 
of obscure labor can be dispensed with ? We may 
not have the choice of eminence, but obscurity is no 
bar against the charge of treason. I grant, foolish 
youth, you cannot lead in the vanguard of the grand 
ai'my of progress ; but know this likewise, so precious 
is the safety of the host, so great the prize of victory, 



SAT EST VIXISSE. 287 

so calamitous the annihilation of defeat, that even 
you, loiterer, shall not escape the gibbet if but so 
much as one lean and feeble baggage mule goes 
lame in your charge for want of grooming. 

See, my children, you are but a feeble folk if we 
take you oije by one, but the spirit of the ages has 
fed your dreams, and the ambition that throbs within 
you is for a greater result than the great man — whom 
you are not — could himself effect without you. This 
is your inheritance, to understand how the feeble 
millions may join together, how the single efforts 
will gather into groups, and how, as first the units, 
then the groups learn to cease from evil, to cease 
from laying stumbling-blocks in each other's paths, 
at length there will arise a social fabric of which 
the glory. and the good shall transcend the fairest 
imaginations of a solitary genius as far as the loyal 
service of enlightened millions will outw^elgh in 
efficacy your boyish efforts at creative independence. 
This, and not eminence, shall be your reward at 
last, to see more and more clearly how each step 
towards the great result was won by the co-opera- 
tion of countless lives, disciplined each in action 
and forbearance, and all alike gloriously indispens- 
able to the final triumph of the race. The verdict, 
Sat est vixisse^ comes from those who have shared 
in such life as this. 

And it does not foUov^ that all who have ceased 



288 SAT EST VIXISSE. 

to talk of their ideal have ceased to care for it. We 
leave off talking w^hen w^e find that it is as hard to 
match our thought w^ith w^ords as our ready words 
with action. The oracle in " Wilhelm Meister" 
says truly, " To think is easy, to act difficult, to 
act according to our thought troublesome." One of 
the best fruits of age is an appreciation of the slender 
shades of difference which mark off our doings from 
our intentions ; we have a scruple in saying what 
we intended when we know how much our act has 
fallen short ; and yet it may be that both act and 
will are better, more purely good, than in the 
bolder days when we boasted of aiming at nothing 
short of perfectness. 



But does the boy ask that our lives shall " come 
to something " in his eyes or our own ? Is the test 
objective worth or subjective satisfaction, and shall 
he or I be the judge of what is " enough" of either? 
or is he still exercised by the same problem as 
Patriarchs and Psalmists before him, with the added 
discrepancy between recompense and merits, that 
the largest merits no longer carry with them at least 
the cheap salve of self-complacency ? Does he want 
to know whether it is enough to live righteously 
without flourishing like a green bay tree in conse- 
quence, or has he a formed opinion that it isn't, and 



SAT EST VIXISSE. 289 

that therefore the righteous must either flourish or 
let him know the reason why ? Does he . . . 



What he actually does at this point is to interrupt 
my disconnected jottings and summon me to join 
the Granny and Hester at tea in the upper chamber 
of the tower. It is one of the unwritten laws of the 
island that the visitors do not break up into smaller 
knots than four for excursions, luncheons, afternoon 
tea, &c., unless sweethearts or invalids receive a 
special dispensation, and I obeyed willingly enough, 
not observing that Johnny had meanwhile pbssessed 
himself of the loose sheets on which I had been 
writing. He produced them after tea, saying, "In 
the multitude of counsellors there is wisdom," and 
insisted on reading my platitudes to the ladies as the 
day grew pale. 

When he came to the last paragraph he said, " Of 
course, this isn't finished, but if dear old Philo is 
left to himself, he will wander ofl" into moral reflec- 
tions that may be worthy of the seven sages, but 
that don't tell me exactly what I want to know." 

I asked, " What is it that you want to know? " 

" That is exactly what I want you to tell me,'* 
he obserA'ed, and Hester smiled, as if the remark 
was more than usually to the point. She is five 
and twenty, rather handsome, rather clever and 
rather sarcastic, one of the girls usually spoken of 



290 SAT EST VIXISSE. 

by lady friends with some " wonder that she doesn't 
marry." She says that she will do so when any 

one as nice as Mrs. Charles A (otherwise 

known as the Granny) asks her. This lady is 
twelve or fifteen years older than Hester ; she was 
left a widow young, and undertook the charge of 
an elder brother's daughter after his wife's death. 
This niece also married young, and the climax was 
put to a long series of family bereavements by the 
death of husband and wife, drowned on the passage 
out to India. One little girl of theirs was left 

behind in England. Mrs. Charles A adopted 

her orphan grandniece, but insisted on marking the 
interval between the two generations by teaching 
the child (who was by this time about ten) to call 
her Granny instead of Aunt. Silver hairs and some 
of the sererlity of beautiful old age joined with the 
name to make young and old accept the little fiction 
which warranted her grand-maternal airs. 

There was a pause as I did not respond to 
Johnny's ingenious iappeal, broken presently by 
Hester. "Johnny is rather rude, Cousin Philip; 
but I think girls, at all events, want to be told " — 
and then she stopped ; and the Granny said, ^' Both 
bbys and womert have a notion, which they are too 
shy to express, that life isn't all learning arid doing. 
Its happiness depends on our pleasures and what we 
call our '' feelings,' and this is the terra incognita of 
which they think a guide, philosopher and friend 



SAT EST VIXISSE. 291 

should give them news before they embark towards 

I said, "If talk about what people ought to do 
is wearisome, what words will you find to describe 
the frigid dreariness of talk about w^hat people 
ought to feel? Besides, most people admit that 
they don't do all they ought, but who is willing to 
admit that his own natural feelings can be in the 
wrong ? " 

"At least," said Hester, " it doesn't make much 
difference whether one ought to have felt this and 
that or no, so long as one has felt or feels it still. 
We can't help ourselves ; perhaps we oughtn't to 
have eaten ginger ; but if we have, w^hat is the sense 
of saying we oughtn't to feel it hot in the mouth, or 
of telling us to try and believe we don't ? " 

" The right and wTong of feelings," I replied, " if 
there is such a thing, must answer to health and 
disease in tastes. One's moral stomach, for exam- 
ple, must be out of order if the sweets of natural 
affection have an acrid taste. Sometimes the desires 
which it is natural and wholesome to indulge may 
not be gratified, but the world, not we, is to blame 
for that. It is a suicidal kind of adaptation which 
would try to sti'angle such desires because they la}' 
us open to fresh risks of disappointment. We shall 
not mend the world by trying, chameleon-wise, tp 
take the color of its blemishes. Whatever our 
desires may be, now and again they will sufter dis- 



292 SAT EST VIXISSE. 

appointment ; but those who have the courage to 
endure the still-recurring disappointments without 
hardening in resistance will not always desire in 
vain." 

" That," said Hester, " is just what we were ask- 
ing. Looking dispassionately at the experience of 
most other people — (why should we expect to be 
wiser than they.^) — what do the results of their 
lives enable us to predict about our own ? " 

" It is as a generalization from experience that I 
offer you the opinion that generalities will give 
you little help. Every passage of individual ex- 
perience is sut similis^ and the theoretical solution 
of a difficulty is seldom of much practical avail, 
even when we know it. While the feelings are 
entangled in the act of forming effective premisses, 
what satisfaction can be derived from guessing at 
the ultimate result, which most probably will follow 
after the intervention of other factors as yet unfelt } 
People are seldom left to reason themselves out of 
a difficulty with unchanged feelings." 

" But," said the Granny, by way of guidance, 
" do their feelings change in the direction needed 
for their satisfaction? Do people as a rule get 
what they want, late if not soon "^ Do they, at least, 
afj the Spanish proverb advises, and Johnny reluct- 
antly suspects, do they end by wanting what they can 
g'^t, since they cannot get what they wanted t " 

The Master had joined us unobserved, and he 



SAT EST VIXISSE. 293 

answered, "Life modifies their wants more than 
their gettings ; but you young people can't be ex- 
pected to understand beforehand how tastes give 
way to habit as the years go on. There is no end 
to a boy's difficulties because misfortunes and dis- 
contents that are confronted a priori leave no 
motives behind them. Real adventures, whether 
they turn out well or ill, leave a legacy of incentives 
both to action and forbearance ; and in the long-run 
men more often suffer from the presence of induce- 
ments to do wrong than from the absence of induce- 
ments to do right, or to do anything at all." 

" And this being so ?" said the Granny. 

The Master and she have a way of continuing 
each other's sentences, and he continued, " This 
being so, it is not unreasonable for the question 
to state itself a priori in 3'outh : What clue should 
a man grasp beforehand to sei*\"e as a guide when 
overmastering passion threatens to sweep him off 
the beaten track "^ " 

"What, indeed?" said Johnny, w^ho adopts a 
fresh creed every vacation and for the moment calls 
himself an agnostic. 

"Does it seem a trifling answer to say that in 
hours of passionate trial or temptation a man can 
have no better help than his own past.^ Every 
generous feeling that has not been crushed, every 
wholesome impulse that has been followed, eveiy 
just perception, every habit of unselfish action, 



294 SAT EST VIXISSE. 

will be present in the background to guide or to 
restrain. It is too late, when the storm has burst, 
to provide our craft with rigging fit to \veather it ; 
but we may find a purpose for the years that oppress 
us by their dull calm if we elect to spend them in 
laying up stores of strength and wisdom and emo- 
tional prejudices of a goodly human kind, whereby, 
if need arises, we may be able to resist hereafter 
the gusts of passion that might else bear us out of 
the straightforward chosen course." 

" Let an old wom.an have her turn at preaching," 
said the Granny, with the discriminating smile that 
often heralds a bit of casuistic subtlety. " In 
looking forward for one's self it may be well to say, 
' It will be my own fault, the outcome of my ill- 
spent days, if my strength fails me in a time of 
trial ;' but we all do fail again and again in our 
least endeavors, and none of us, therefore, can sit 
in judgment on another. Who can say but what 
we should have failed yet more utterly under the 
same temptation ? The one favor we have a right 
to show ourselves, the one concession we need not 
grudge to the ineradicable instinct of self-esteem, is 
to view our own failures with the largest measure 
of intolerance. Other people fail, no doubt — it is 
likely enough they should — but how come we of 
all men thus to disappoint our own reasonable ex- 
pectations of something better than common failure 
from the cherished self? " 



SAT EST VIXISSE. 295 

" One topic of consolation may emerge," I said, 
*'from the midst of failure. It is a form of good 
fortune not to have been the vehicle of evil, and as 
one's experience of the number of possible calami- 
ties increases, one's appreciation of the felicity 
involved in escaping them Increases too. Some 
people count among their mercies the crimes they 
have not been tempted to commit." 

She continued: " I know it is a doubtful conso- 
lation to say, either of a real trouble or of one's 
ow^n wickedness, only that ' it might have been 
worse.' As a plea for contentment, this argument 
is about on a par with the other favorite suggestion, 
' It is a hard case, but that of somebody else is 
■ harder.' That some one else Is worse off than I am 
can hardly be an alleviation of my trouble — an 
aggravation rather. It is Mephistopheles who sneers 
the consolation, ' Sie ist die Erste nicht.' " 

" But there are two parts in our indignation 
against what Is wrong In the world," said the 
Master, " and they have a different origin. There 
is the spontaneous revolt of our feeling and the 
deliberate disapproval of our judgment. As a phi- 
losopher, I have no more reason to denounce the 
order of creation because I happen to be one of its 
victims than because Nokes or Styles are victims. 
As a man, my denunciations of the wrongs of Nokes 
or Styles usually borrow half their fervor from the 
resemblance between their wrongs and mine, and 



296 SAT EST VIXISSE. 

half the remainder from my imagination of their 
wrongs as so nearly within the range of possible 
contingencies for myself as to stir the sympathetic 
wrath which is the earliest phase of fellow-feeling. 
But supposing, as is the case with most young 
people, I have little personal knowledge of my 
fellow-sufferers, and an absorbing sense of the 
wrong or hardship of my own lot, ought I to find 
any motive for fortitude and patience in the abstract 
certainty that I have fellow-sufferers I do not 
know ? " 

" I don't," observ^ed Johnny ; and we smiled par- 
enthetically at the notion of the cheerfully argu- 
mentative youth being claimed as the fellow of any 
sufferer. 

"Still, if it were not indiscreet," — and Hester 
leant back in her chair with wondering, interroga- 
tive glances. 

" Well ? " said the Master as she paused. 

She laughed, and tried more than once before 
arriving at her questi(3n. 

"I should like to know, supposing you do get the 
thing of things you wished for, the very best pleas- 
ure of one's dreams, or rather — 

A pleasure as much better than one's dreams 
As happiness than any longing seems — 

What comes after that? If I am walking about 
in and out of doors all day, I feel neither cold nor 



SAT EST VIXISSE. 297 

heat ; but if I've been for a sharp walk in the frost 
or sitting over a snug fire, I am very critical of the 
temperature of the room one goes into next." 

A " Well bowled !" from Johnny was the only 
immediate response. 

I feared lest the accidental silence might give the 
question the effect, or rather the appearance, of in- 
discretion, and stumbled to the rescue with a story. 
Hester should have die verdict of a better authority 
than any one present. I named a great poet, who 
was popular and successful besides ; he was not 
supposed to have passed an entirely tranquil youth, 
but he was happily married long ago, and has never 
ceased to be in love with his wife. He was pre- 
vailed upon by an undergraduate son to assist at 
a college " wine ; " the young fellows were excited 
over the honor done them, and talked fast and furi- 
ously, each one wishing to have the poet's verdict 
on the wildest of his pet beliefs. At last we got 
to the originals of Goethe's " West-ostlicher Divan," 
and thence to the extravagances of passion and the 
superstitious reaction of belief in Nemesis and the 
" Ring of Polykrates." 

The poet said there was wisdom in all supersti- 
tion, and most of all in this. He rose from his chair, 
towering like a giant in the low room, and said ; 
" If any of you live to be as happy as I hope you 
may, you will know what it is to feel that you must 
ransom your treasure of delight, or cold fate will 



298 SA T EST VIXISSE. 

sweep it from your arms. It is a strange feeling : 
one does not dream of earning one's good luck — 
that is sweet beyond the imagination of desert — but 
one has an impulse to a|one, to pay back, it matters 
not to whom, something of the undeserved treasures 
of delight which have fallen to our lot from heaven. 
Not being a moral philosopher, only a poor poet," 
he w^ent on, "I am not obliged to find a logical 
reason why I should cherish this superstition, but a 
scientific friend offered me gratis an explanation 
that will pass muster if you want one. 

" However fortunate we may be, the supreme 
ecstasy of fruition cannot last at its intensest point 
for ever : when the climax is reached, we must 
either stop short or risk descent ; and there are mo- 
ments after which even common happiness seems a 
cruel falling short. We cannot prolong the ecstasy ; 
we cannot bear to feel ourselves falling short of 
what has been. There is but one way to propitiate 
Nemesis and avoid the judgment of the gods — to 
make ourselves their executioner, and not tempt 
them with prayers for the mortal draught of unend- 
ing joy. You were speaking of the Persian poet's 
intoxication : whether he is drunk with wine, or 
love, or piety, makes little odds ; my worship of 
Nemesis is but a practical expression of Byron's 
bugbear, ' Sermons and soda-water the day after.' 
Drink your deepest, drink till you have drained 
creation's sweetest goblet dry, then do not hold it 



SAT EST VJXISSE. 299 

out to be filled again from heaven, but take off your 
coat and go out to ^^lough ; work, endure, open 
your eyes to the unendurable suffering and the un- 
rewarded labor at your very door, and only when 
you have paid your tribute to the jealous goddesses 
whose snares are set for presumptuous feet, only 
then dare to desire, if it may be, the renewal of. 
your bliss. So, and only so, can one who has it in 
him to be ravenous escape the curse of greed, which 
is to enjoy the less the more there is given it to 
enjoy. 

" One grows thirsty preaching ; " — the poet held 
out a goblet of heroic proportions, and the Amphi- 
tryon of the evening drew the cork of his last bottle 
of champagne. The poet raised the glass with an 
inch of foam upon the surface and drank — drank 
all the foam and three quarters of the wine — to 
Temperance and Nemesis. " A perfect draught," 
he said with a sigh, and added meditatively, *' but 
a mouthful more or less would have been a mis- 
take." 

He balanced the glass with an absent air bet^veen 
his fingers, till they clenched upon it and snapped 
the slender stem, letting the bow^l fall and the wine 
spill where it would. All whose glasses were not 
empty followed his example (though some, I fancy, 
cut their fingers) , shouting, ' ' A libation to Nem- 
esis ! " 

Amphitiyon's papa thought the bill for broken 



300 SAT BST VIXISSE. 

glass and wine-stained carpets immoderate, but was 
propitiated by the gift of a Venetian goblet, with 
a silver sheath holding the two parts of a snapped 
stem together. On the sheath was engraved, *' To 
Nemesis and Sophrosyne." 

After a whispered consultation with her school- 
boy ally, Hester observed that the ancient Greeks had 
made a mistake about the gender of the latter noun. 

The Master remonstrated: "Hester wishes to 
keep us to her point, but I will not be allured 
from mine. If it is well to indulge moderately in 
the taste of supreme felicity, a fortiori it must be 
foolish to fill our pipe with the consciousness of 
woe and smoke that sour opium to excess. Besides, 
unless we carry off this pipe of dispeace into a 
desert, we find always so much of good and bad 
still in the world outside our woes, that we end by 
feeling it to be reasonable to give them less than all 
our thoughts. It is while we have no feelings but 
our own to think about that we think our feelings 
afford a rational base for conclusions about the na- 
ture and worth of life." 

" Propositions of this kind," I said, " may be 
understood as soon as the reasoning powers are 
awake, but only exceptional natures are born with 
the temper that leads some persons in each genera- 
tion to find out their truth afresh, and to turn the 
insignificant phrases into a fact of living and fruitful 
experience." ^ 



SAT EST VIXISSB. 2>^l 

" There are some truths, I grant," said the Mas- 
ter, "that it seems ahnost impossible to convey in 
words except to those who know them ah'eady, and 
yet it is worth while to make the attempt. The state- 
ment that passes half-understood from the unready 
mind may yet serve as a finger-post pointing towards 
the after experience which is the more easily under- 
stood because of the premature explanation of it that 
was not understood at all. We cannot help our 
juniors to know, of their own knowledge, Avhat the 
lapse of time ^vill show" to them as it has to us, but 
we may prevail on them so far as to rank the ful- 
filment of our prophecies among the category of 
possibilities, which of itself is a step, sometimes 
the first and costliest, towards understanding and 
belief. 

" And the dull chorus of graybeards all agree in 
prophesying your life will be what you yourself 
choose and will to make it — subject to the real co7t' 
ditions. Subject to the conditions in which you 
find yourself, and can only modify v/ithin limits, 
there is no limit to your power of living the best 
possible life — there is no limit but your own fool- 
ish choice and feeble will ; and if you have wit and 
strength to see the folly and foolishness behind you, 
there need be no limit to your hope and purpose of 
escaping even yet from their dominion. Make to 
yourself friends of all the powers of righteousness, 
and study as a science or an art the art of scientifi- 



302 SAT EST VIXISSE. 

cally circumventing your own base propensities. 
The largest ambitions are a safeguard against ennui^ 
and the least good habit against sudden failures." 

Hester said, coloring slightly as she ended: "Is 
there any ambition without arrogance ? Too arro- 
gant good intentions are apt to form no other habits 
save that of falling short of them." 

The Granny received the observation with a smile 
of recognition, and added that St. Theresa took a 
vow of perfectness from which she had to be ab- 
solved because her director had not time to tell her 
always (perhaps he did not know) which of two 
courses her vow prescribed. 

" It was hard upon the saint," our friend con- 
tinued, " and it is hard upon us sinners to know too 
much of human nature to dare to wish to inherit her 
ambition ; but I think there is this reward in store 
for modest and feasible good-behavior — to wit, a 
growing sense of the attractiveness of the saint's 
ideal. Surely, in these days of world-weariness, no 
revelation can be more welcome than that of a goal 
which attracts the more the longer we pursue, 
which appears in all its divine beauty the more 
plainly to our eyes as they learn to measure the im- 
passable and infinite abyss across which its radiance 
shines as we worship afar off'. The best possible 
life, of which we spoke, is the one that enjoys 
most largely the beatific vision of an ever-impossible 
Better. ~ 



SAT EST VIXISSE. 303 

*' Many have asked, ' Is there a good on earth to 
live for ? ' but no one ever questioned v^hether the 
best good of earth was good, if so be it might be 
had. Earth's happiest best is reaHzed, as the 
happiest among us know, in the 'eternal marriage 
of love and duty,' when the love of one and the 
service of many go hand in hand — when choice and 
obligation point one way, and the whole soul exults 
in glad obedience to their joint sweet urging — when 
the devotion of heart and will is such as to make 
even the answer of love and praise sound far away, 
faint and sweet, like the memory of over-paid 
desert. Such a moment translated beyond the 
grave inspires the Christian text, ' Well done, good 
and faithful servant ; enter thou into the joy of thy 
Lord.' I do not think it is given us to imagine 
any brighter crown of life than this, or indeed any 
other crown for the whole of life. Love alone, 
victory or fame — each counts for much, but which 
alone can so fulfil the widespread cravings of the 
human heart as not to leave one aching blank, w^ith 
power in its season to poison all the rest that is 
enjoyed } 

''That is the best ; and for the man who has done 
nothing worse than fail innocently — and the worst 
luck forces on us no worse fate than this — who has 
failed to do great deeds, and win a greater love (and 
for each one the love and deeds are great which are 
great enough to content his own desire) , for such 



304 SAT EST VIXISSE. 

there is nothing worse in store than this, to know 
that there are others in the world better off than 
he. There Is one thing I should have liked to see 
before I died. I sometimes wished to try and 
hasten the good day, but I was not the chosen- 
prophet ; yet let it be remembered of me, when he 
comes and others see it, that I said the day of his 
coming was near. I speak of a day when all my 
understanding friends will dare to join together In 
uttering, one with another, one to another, their 
deepest feelings and beliefs concerning man's life, 
the place of our life in the Infinite universe, and 
the answer of the human soul to the omnipotent 
urgency of the infinite : and wdien once more deep 
faith will dare to trust Itself to act. 

" I write my own epitaph. Sat est vixisse^ with- 
out mourning because I shall not see that day, 
because I see so clearly that It must come — a day 
when my friends' jarring paradoxes and the demands 
of Incompatible prejudices shall crystallize Into a 
broader, more luminous, more stirring whole, accep- 
table alike to all the many, growing day by day 
more, to whom human life is sacred, and who are 
willing to accept for their own life the rule, which 
is also a religion, of tender reverence for human 
sorrow, glad sympathy with human joy, and, as the 
source w^hich feeds all wholesome natural life with 
its choicest treasures of emotion, the stress of active 



SAT EST VIXISSE. 305 

energy, the steady exercise of eveiy power of mind 
and will to order and create. 

" We have to make the world in which we live 
and act, in which our fellows have to find the ob- 
jects of their love, in which their love may join 
with ours in the joyous passion of unwounded sym- 
pathy. In so far as I have taken part in the work 
and shared the feelings of those who strive crea- 
tively after a better order, in so far as my mind has 
rested, filled and satisfied with the vision of its not 
impossible avatar, in so far I am prepared to fall 
asleep with the grateful sigh that ends a day of 
pleasant labor, with the absolute content that is as 
free from desire as from regret. I have lived ! 
Sat est vixisse. 

" Life's duties leave us content to live, its pains 
and pleasures content not to live for ever." 

And the white-haired young widow added : 
*' More than content to live and die if our dearest 
one may live for ever in the changeless memories 
of almighty love." 



NOVELS BY 

THE DUCHESS, 

AU of wliich. are now issued in Lovell's Library, in 
handsome 12mo form, for 

VIZ : 

Portia, or By Passions Rocked^ " 
Phyllis, 

Molly Bawn, 

Airy Fairy Lillian, 

Mrs. Geoffrey, Etc., Etc. 



The works by The L>uchess have passed, and far passed, all 
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PIANOFORTES. 

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